


D'you wanna come with me?

by LunaStorm



Series: The Trip of a Lifetime [1]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Stargate SG-1, Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Genre: Canon friendly, Gen, Technobabble, scientific mumbo-jumbo, wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-02
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-01-27 14:44:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 103,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1714394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaStorm/pseuds/LunaStorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the Doctor ends up in interesting places and meets some interesting people; par for the course, really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 'Cause if you do, I should warn you...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daniel's gaze went from the strange man to the even stranger telephone box and roamed over the square lines of its design, so oddly familiar... “Hold on!” he cried out, astonished. “I- I've seen this before!”  
> 

The desert sun was a lot harsher than Daniel had expected and his allergy to journeys was playing up badly, but the site was worth all the hassle.

A royal necropolis on the west bank of the Nile, with two of the oldest, largest and best preserved pyramids in Egypt, dating back over four and a half millennia! From the moment he'd first seen the outlines of the Bent Pyramid and the Red Pyramid on the horizon, during the brief trip from Saqqara, he'd known that it held everything he'd dreamed of and more.

In the half-hour they'd been here, among the excavated features of the distant past, he'd realized that neither the excruciating hot temperatures nor the persistent dust being blown everywhere by the surprisingly strong wind meant anything to him: this was a paradise.

Sturdy white tents criss-crossed the area and he watched with undisguised envy the number of pale-shrouded archaeologists from all over the world that were allowed to actually work on the field, rather than just stroll through it like the tourists.

Oh, how he wished he'd been able to convince someone – anyone, really – to include him in the dig. Any dig. Better still, to fund one of his own!

Sadly, that was likely to remain a wishful dream. The scientific community was determinedly blind and no effort on his part got him anywhere except as a joke. Even Dr. Jordan was outright dismissive of his theories.

Daniel sighed bitterly. It hurt, being treated like nothing more than a delusional fool. There were far too many of those to be found in every corner of the Earth – Daniel could attest to that: only two days before, on the plane, he'd had to listen to a bloke earnestly going on and on about mysterious time wars and travelling with an alien lord or something. And about wishing desperately to find him again.

The poor bloke had looked perfectly normal in his framed glasses, with a very sensible square face and slightly receding haircut; but he'd sounded like the sad drunkards prone to con the next beer from credulous tourists with stories of alien kidnappings, or one of those weirdos on fanatics-funded broadcasts raving about angels roaming the Earth.

And Daniel hadn't found anything better to say than a lame: “Well, you could always write it all down and send it to ABC. They might take it as a sci-fi script, if nothing else... you'd make some money, at least.”

He'd been more acidly dismissive than he usually was, but the bloke hadn't minded; instead, his eyes had lit up with a firework of possibilities and he'd started muttering to himself: “And I could fund further research on the matter... private research... but it would have to be... perhaps... yes, after all, why not?...” He'd kept stroking the bulky watch strapped to his wrist all through the rest of the flight and for some reason, it had unnerved Daniel. Though he could admit that what had disturbed him the most had been realizing the very real possibility that that might end up being his fate after all.

Except he probably wouldn't even have success with it. He could just see himself walking dejectedly into a bookshop and finding a pile of copies of _The Truth About the Pyramids_ by D. Jackson, being sold at a 70% discount in the bargain section. It would probably have an horribly gaudy cover, too, he'd bet.

But no! He couldn't afford to think like that. He was right, he knew he was. He just needed a chance to prove it; and sooner or later, he would get that chance.

He sighed again. His hands were itching to run along the beautiful stony hieroglyphs describing King Sneferu's military incursion in Libya, which their coarse guide was just then translating. Wrongly. Not by much, admittedly, but he was still wrong. Daniel closed his eyes for a long moment, pained.

He fell behind and did his best to tune everything of the present out and fill his eyes and mind with the bounty of history and culture that sandy, dusty corner of the world was offering so generously.

Their guide started shouting after a while, to gather them for the return trip, but Daniel ignored him. He only had a week here – couldn't afford anything more, nor was it likely that he could save up enough for another trip anytime soon; he had no intention of wasting his time. If he managed, he planned on avoiding even sleep.

He was going to enjoy. Every. Last. Second.

He wandered off, naturally drawn to the less touristy areas and poured all his focus on the wealth of half-erased inscriptions that dotted the valley temple site.

Maybe, just maybe he should consider compromising with the rest of the scholars about his theories. He knew he was right, but oh! To be allowed to work on these digs! He was never going to get his wish if he stuck to his convictions, losing all credibility in the face of those blind fools who, unfortunately, controlled most of the funds for his field of study. Maybe he should just give up.

He caught sight of a half-hidden, partly collapsed wall with an unexpected combination of symbols – the metonymic logograph for 'traveler' with the determinative for 'god' – and ducked under a rope held by battered delimitation columns, careless of the mistreatment he was inflicting to his already worn out clothes.

Everything faded into irrelevance around him as he lost himself into the joy of translation, slowly moving farther and farther away from the officially approved paths, following the trail of information recorded four thousand years earlier...

Out of the blue, a series of weird, wheezing noises started up right behind the wall Daniel was studying, startling him out of his focused reverie: like a crescendo of trumpeting of elephants, getting louder until they stopped with an unexpected thud.

Completely flabbergasted, Daniel moved slowly around the corner, peering out to whatever had made those strange sounds.

What he saw made him take off his glasses and frantically clean them with the dusty hem of his shirt, all the while blinking owlishly at the big blue box that most likely was _not_ supposed to be there.

It looked like the back of a telephone box, only blue. And it was kind of squished between two ancient walls. Looking completely out of place.

Putting his glasses back on, and distractedly noticing that he'd accomplished nothing except making it even harder to see anything, what with the sand now smeared all over the lenses, Daniel tried to make sense of what he was seeing.

There was a loud bang, followed by a crash, then more clangs and clanks, and finally a dull thud.

Daniel hurried to the... blue telephone box... if that was what it was... and pushed himself into the narrow space between it and the nearest wall, squeezing himself until he managed to pass through, even though he had to sacrifice his waistcoat, whose many pockets had got wedged on the edge of the box and the wall.

On the other side, a tall man with close-cropped hair and jug ears was getting to his feet: he wore a black leather jacket, dark trousers and black boots and looked utterly normal and utterly out of place at the same time.

By the looks of it, a temporary wall had collapsed on him and dragged down an entire cupboard on top, spilling catalogued fragments of artefacts all over the place.

Daniel blinked, stunned to find himself in the back storage area of the valley temple's temporary museum, where the remnants of the mudbrick houses of the priests of Sneferu's mortuary cult were being catalogued and stored against the enclosure wall. How had he got there?

Come to think of it, the light was a lot more reddish and the air a lot more stifling than it had been just a moment ago... it was just a moment ago, right? Admittedly it looked like sunset was close, but... surely not?

The man dusted himself off brusquely, then checked the black wristwatch strapped to his wrist and glanced at his surroundings critically.

“Hmm... it seems I'm a little further away than I'd aimed for,” he said with a British accent. “Not too much, though. That's good.”

He looked up and smiled at Daniel winningly.

“Who are you?” asked Daniel rather stupidly.

“I'm the Doctor!” was the perky reply. “Who are you?”

“Dr. Daniel Jackson,” he replied automatically. “Sorry, Doctor who?”

“Just the Doctor,” the weird man answered cheerfully.

Daniel's gaze went from him to the telephone box – and yes, it was just that: there was even writing on top of it, saying 'Police Public Call Box'. It was unbelievable.

Daniel's gaze roamed over the square lines of its design, so oddly familiar... “Hold on!” he cried out, astonished. “I- I've seen this before!”

The Doctor raised an eyebrow: “Really? That's interesting. I don't remember meeting you before. Maybe I've yet to.”

Daniel swung his head back to stare at the man: “What?”

“Oh, you know. Sometimes I meet a person when he or she has already met me. Hazards of travelling in time, I guess.”

Daniel repeated in shock: “Traveling in time?”

“I imagine sometime in one of my futures I'll meet you in your past, then. Something to look forward to!” the weird man finished with a huge grin.

“No; no no no no. That. But. You. That. I--” Daniel ran a hand through his longish brown hair, feeling out of his depth. He took a deep breath, trying to find some coherence: “This makes no sense,” he murmured. “No sense at all. Who are you?”

The man frowned: “I thought you said you'd seen my Tardis already.”

 _Tardis_ , mouthed Daniel, gaping. Then he blinked at the man's deepening frown: “No, I mean... not _seen_ seen, just... seen it.”

“You're the one who's not making any sense now.”

“Huh. Right. Right.” Daniel ran his hand through his hair again. “I- I mean I saw something on a cartouche, among hieroglyphs. Something absurd. It didn't make any sense, but I- I think maybe, now it does. Because. Right. I- I suspect it was... this.” He gestured to the blue box.

The man – the Doctor? – raised his eyebrows and crossed his arms.

Daniel grabbed him by an elbow (to the man's obvious shock) and dragged him away: “Here, come. Come have a look. It was just... this... way.... _There!”_

And there it was indeed: an undoubtedly authentic sculpted hieroglyph of an undoubtedly anachronistic phone box.

“This... this hasn't been related to any other hieroglyph ever found, I remember reading about it, didn't even know it was here. Heh.” Daniel looked at the strange shape with fondness and wonder. “It's incredible. It's simply not explainable. Most scholars just think it's a hoax, never mind the radiocarbon dating. But I knew there had to be more... Oh, some other egyptologysts have tried to come up with theories, but nothing makes sense, especially in the context it's put in – see here? It's in a list of 'treasures' for the temple, included in the narration about a 'traveler god', of whom there is no trace in Egyptian mythology I might add, and 'war machines' that-”

“Yes, yes. I was there, you know, I don't need a blow-by-blow account,” said the Doctor irritatedly. His gaze was dark and sad.

“You were there...” breathed Daniel. “So it's true. What you were saying. It's impossible, but it's true. You... you travel in time!” He put a hand over his mouth, beyond shocked – and just a tiny bit delighted. “And this!” He pointed back to the mysterious hieroglyph, his enthusiasm growing. “This is real. It's your... whatever you called it, isn't it? It really is. I knew it had to be a representation of a thing, not a concept... the Egyptian writing system has always included a combination of both alphabetic and logographic elements, you know, and...”

“Yes, yes, it's the Tardis,” murmured the Doctor, sounding tired all of a sudden. “Odd, though. I didn't think I'd made such an impression. Not until much later, at least – I don't remember ever visiting Ancient Egypt again... not until the New Kingdom period, anyway. I was never very comfortable with the Old and Intermediate Dynasties,” he explained with a slight grimace. “All those alien gods.”

“What? Wait- what?!” Daniel's eyes were bugging out.

The Doctor shook his head disapprovingly: “I simply can't stand aliens posing as gods. They make me nervous. Because of Sutekh, you know,” he said in confidence. “Which reminds me!”

He snapped his head up and sprinted away.

Daniel was left gaping after him for a long moment before he managed to break through his shock and run after the mystifying time traveller. “Wait. Wait! You can't just run off like this!”

“Yes I can!” the Doctor shouted over his shoulder. “Look. This is me, running off. See ya!”

“But, but... but!” Daniel started running after the strange man. “Wait! Wait, please! You have to- look, can you just stop a moment?” he panted.

The Doctor slowed down and turned with a very put-upon expression: “What is it?” he asked, starting to walk nonchalantly backwards.

Out of breath, Daniel attempted to put into words the exhilarated thoughts that were threatening to make him burst with excitement: “Your... thing! It's a- a phone box! And, and- it's blue, and it was depicted in a hieroglyphic text!”

“It wasn't blue in the depiction,” pointed out the Doctor unhelpfully.

“You said the ancient gods were aliens!” cried Daniel.

The Doctor stopped, wavered, grimaced, then admitted: “I... did, yes. Yes, I said so.” A pause. “You don't have to listen.”

“I knew it!” Daniel shouted his triumph to the universe. “This is the proof! I was right!” He laughed in pure glee. “I was right about everything! Ha! Ha ha ha ha!” He tried doing a very uncoordinated victory dance.

The Doctor started marching briskly away again.

“No, wait. Wait!” Daniel ran after him. “You can't just walk away – that's not fair. You've gotta tell me what's going on.”

“No I don't.”

“But this, this ties in with my theories perfectly! Don't you understand! I was right!”

“Good for you!”

“I told them, I told them that the Pyramids of Giza are much older than the third millennium BC...”

“ 'Course they are.”

Daniel gaped: “You... you believe me?”

“Why wouldn't I?” asked the Doctor distractedly.

He found a Jeep in the employee parking and deftly took out something metal from a pocket of his leather jacket. It glowed for a moment and the car lock sprang.

Daniel ran around to the other door and slammed his hands on the window, positively vibrating with excitement: “With your help, I could get the scientific community to listen to me!”

“Sorry, I'm a bit busy at the moment.”

“Please!” shouted Daniel, aware that he was sounding desperate. “You're the proof that I'm not delusional!”

The Doctor's eyebrows raised again.

“The entire scientific world thinks I'm deluded, they're ostracising me, saying I'm a madman, but I know, I _know_ I'm right, there are proofs of cross-pollination of ancient cultures everywhere if you just look and now you're confirming my idea that the pyramids were actually landing sites for alien spaceships and this is beyond fantastic and you can't go away like that!”

Daniel ran out of steam, panting, but he'd managed to capture the attention of the Doctor, who gave him a sudden look of concentration: “Hold on a mo',” he said. “Did you say Daniel Jackson?”

“Yeah. That's. Um. That's me,” replied Daniel, straightening up and fidgeting a little.

The Doctor's eyes widened with pleased surprise: “Daniel Jackson!” he repeated with growing enthusiasm. “Doctor Daniel Jackson! The foremost expert in ancient languages and history on Planet Earth! Egyptologist, archaeologist, historian, and of course, renowned terrestrial and extraterrestrial linguist... The person responsible for deciphering and unlocking the Stargate for the United States Air Force!”

The Doctor was now grinning in delight and looking at Daniel like a fan meeting a celebrity.

“I'm... all that?” Daniel asked, incredulous and hopeful at once.

“Well.” The Doctor returned serious abruptly. “You will be. Possibly. Hopefully. See ya!”

He wrenched the car door open and climbed swiftly inside. Without a second thought, Daniel threw himself after him and fastened his seatbelt under the Doctor's irritated gaze: “I'm coming with you,” he declared, more bravely than he felt.

The time traveller rolled his eyes: “Why is it that you humans must always run head first into the unknown?”

Daniel found himself gaping again: “You... humans?”

The Doctor powered up the car and started to manoeuvre it: “Yes, I'm an alien. Problem?”

He nearly backed them into a wall, then almost ran over a rubbish bin when he reversed direction. Daniel grabbed the seat with both hands, holding his breath, but shook his head vehemently: “You're the one with the answers I seek, I don't care what galaxy you come from.”

“And what makes you think I'll give you any of those answers?”

The Doctor sped up, apparently disregarding both the actual road and any obstacles on their path, only ever swerving to avoid them at the very last minute. Daniel valiantly fought down a whimper at his slipshod driving.

“For that matter, why do you need my help?” he asked, frowning at Daniel and, incidentally, not paying much attention to where he was driving.

They got onto the road, by the looks of it by chance, and darted away far above whatever speed limit there might have been for it.

Daniel sagged against the seat with a defeated sigh: “Let's just say that my theory finds little acceptance in the academic world and leave it at that,” he said, thinking bitterly of the ridicule that his colleagues usually reserved for him.

“Current.”

“What?”

“In the current academic world. Give it... oh... 100 years or so, and no-one will doubt you at all.”

“That's not very comforting.”

The Doctor beamed a too-bright smile at him and steered abruptly to control the suddenly skidding Jeep, thrusting Daniel against the door.

The archaeologist grimaced, but doggedly forged on: “Tell me more.”

“I'm not sure I should. Terrible thing, meddling with timelines. Knowing too much could kill you. Change the course of history for the worst. Destroy the entire universe. Who knows?”

“Are you always this catastrophic?”

“Well, I admit that's a worst-case scenario. The destruction could be limited to the human race.” The Doctor darted a glance at Daniel and smirked.

“But you've already told me so much. What difference will it make?” pleaded the archaeologist.

Sighing with impatience, the Doctor sped up even more and tried a different approach: “You don't need any help. You figured it all out on your own, didn't you? How did you come up with that theory anyway?”

And just like that, Daniel was off onto a lengthy lecture, explaining in detail everything he'd observed, conjectured, deduced and hoped. He trailed off when he realized the Doctor was parking the car with a noisy skid.

“...Where are we?”

“See that?” The weird man pointed to a squat building complex hunkered down around an unremarkable hill on which Daniel's expert eye could spot some discreet, but clear, signs of Egyptian architecture. The settlement had an undefinable area of military.

“Yeah?” he asked, a bit uncomfortable.

“That is what I came to check.”

The Doctor got out of the Jeep and strolled up to the barred entry gate as if he owned it.

Daniel hurried after him: “Hold on, we can't get in there, we don't have permission!” he hissed urgently.

“Don't we?” asked the Doctor in mock surprise.

He marched straight up to the military-looking guard and showed off a flap of black leather which presumably contained a paper: “I'm the Doctor and this is my assistant,” he announced authoritatively.

Daniel tried not to let his jaw fall in shock.

The uniformed guard took the paper, studied it carefully, then nodded and motioned them through.

The Doctor moved with the determination of someone who knew exactly where he was going.

Daniel hastily followed, eyes wide and dazed: “How did you do that? How could you possibly do that? This site is under control of the military, you can't possibly have done that!” He caught up with the Doctor. “Did you bribe them? Is that it? Was there money in the folds of that paper?”

“What? No! How did you come up with that idea?” asked the Doctor, genuinely scandalized.

“But you got us in!”

“So I did.”

“But it's impossible! You couldn't possibly be allowed here. _I'm_ certainly not allowed here!”

But the Doctor was already entering an excavated tunnel on the side of the hill and Daniel could only follow him downwards, in thick darkness only pierced by the small torch the time traveller was now holding up.

From what the archaeologist could see, it was a very typical burial site, all dark tunnels and small, barely decorated chambers. Daniel was torn between the violent desire to stay and study every detail for hours on end, and the irresistible pull to follow the mystifying alien and find out what he was doing.

The mystery that was the Doctor won and Daniel found himself half-running to keep up with his loping strides, plunging ever deeper into that darkness he itched to explore and fast reaching what had to be the underground chamber.

The Doctor turned his small torch to the ground, quickly darting the light around until he found some cables and with a soft “Aha!” he blared the unexpectedly whirring thing at them, evidently jury-rigging them because his action triggered a few electric lamps, obviously left behind by whoever was studying the place.

Daniel gasped in awe.

The murals on the walls of the room could not be seen clearly in the shadows, but his breath was taken by what filled the other side of the chamber almost to his ceiling: an enormous, black basalt statue of the jackal-headed god on a throne; Seth in all his magnificence.

The Doctor went instantly to work, starting to pass his torch-thing slowly along the outline of the door and then moving to do the same to the sarcophagus at the feet of the statue. Only, it didn't look much like a torch anymore: there was a sort of bluish laser pulse on it and it was emitting a soft buzzing sound.

The archaeologist considered asking about it for half a second, but history had a greater call on him than whatever alien technology that might be. “Where are we?” he whispered, enthralled.

The Doctor turned to him with gleaming, eager eyes: “This, Doctor Jackson, is the burial chamber of Sutekh; or, was, rather. It's what remains of it.” He returned to his examination and tossed over his shoulder: “We're in the lower levels of the Black Pyramid, in case you’re wondering.”

“There is no Black Pyramid,” blurted out Daniel automatically.

The Doctor grinned in an extremely self-satisfied way: “Not anymore.” Then he returned to his perusal of the sarcophagus, crouching low and muttering to himself.

Daniel shook his head and tried a different line of questioning, his hand running along the stone reverently without much conscious thought: “Sutekh... In ancient Egyptian mythology, Sutekh is one of the many names for Set, the god of the deserts,” he pointed out.

“Oh! Yes, I suppose it was,” was the rather distracted reply. “He travelled a lot, that one. Gathered quite a few names while at it: Set, Setesh, Sadok, the Typhonian Beast, simply Typhon... But the Osirian one was Sutekh.”

The Doctor stood up with a pleased grunt and fiddled with his not-torch, switching the laser light from blue to green. The soft buzzing noise returned with a vengeance.

“Sutekh the Destroyer, that's what his own people called him,” he went on explaining. “Very paranoid. He was convinced that all forms of life might one day challenge his hegemony and feared them for it.”

“What, _all_ forms of life?”

“Yes. All. So he decided to destroy all life in the universe. Very logical, when you think of it.” The Doctor stopped, a thoughtful expression on his face: “Also completely unacceptable, of course.”

Daniel regarded him warily: “What is it that you're looking for in Sutekh's tomb?”

“Well, when I say tomb...” The Doctor turned to him and Daniel got the distinct impression that the mad alien was having a lot of fun. “Prison might be a better word.”

“But that's a sarcophagus. You get those in tombs, not prisons,” the scholar protested.

“The problem with sarcophagi is that they can hide just about anything! A Sontaran cloning device... a Goa'uld healing device... a nuclear power plant...”

“What?” asked Daniel in a strangled voice.

The Doctor contemplated the statue thoughtfully: “Or, an Osirian lodestone...”

“What's a lodestone?” asked Daniel, feeling weak in the knees (a part of him was still wondering about nuclear plants in sarcophagi).

“A type of technology used by the Osirians to travel through time,” was the matter-of-fact answer.

Daniel nodded, pretending with all his forces that he wasn't completely out of his depth: “Like your... Tardis?”

“No, not really. Lodestones have a 1:1 ratio between the distance in time travelled and the time experienced for the traveller, as far as I know no other people ever invented something like this. Of course, not many species live thousands of years like the Osirians. Ageing 70 years to go back in time 70 years wouldn't have mattered much to them.Me, I call it boring.”

Finished with passing his not-torch over every available surface edge, the Doctor stood back abruptly; the metal stick vanished into a pocket of his leather jacket.

“They're tricky things, lodestones,” he said lightly. “Last time I was here, one of those sent my Tardis completely off course. Mind, they're occasionally useful too...”

“And they are hidden in Egyptian sarcophagi?” asked Daniel tentatively.

“Well, those around here are. Except when they're activated, they lose their stone form and become visible doorways.” The Doctor gesticulated to underline his explanation: “Entrances into a time space tunnel, with energy spiralling in their form. It's rather beautiful to see. Like the materialization of a complex mathematical concept. Osirians truly were an amazing species, when it came to mathematics.”

Unable to contain himself any longer, Daniel blurted out: “Ok, look. What, exactly, do you mean by 'Osirians'?”

“I mean that they came from the planet Phaester Osiris.”

“Right.”

“They were a powerful race, the Osirians,” mused the Doctor. “Very advanced psychic powers: mental and physical projection, mind control, telepathy... they particularly liked puzzles. Arrogant bastards, most of them, but much more pleasant than the species that succeeded them as the dominant species of the Milky Way galaxy.”

Daniel's eyes bugged out: “So... so they came from a... a different galaxy?”

“Originally, yes. They liked this one, though.”

“That's...” Daniel swallowed a few times.

The Doctor sighed: “Incredible? Impossible? Delusional? Couldn't you try and be a little more original?”

“...very far from here.”

“Oh.” The Doctor blinked. “Guess you could.”

After an awkward pause, Daniel tried again: “If what you say is true, how did Sutekh end up here of all places?”

The Doctor beamed unnervingly: “He annihilated his home planet and left a trail of destruction across half the galaxy, exterminating all living things he encountered,” he said cheerfully. “He was pursued across the galaxy by his brother and the other seven hundred forty surviving Osirians, until he was finally defeated by their combined might. Here, as it were. Isn't it fantastic?”

Faltering in the face of the enormity of all this, Daniel fell back onto familiar ground and started reciting: “In early Egypt, Set was the brother of Horus, Isis, Nephthys...”

“Who was also his wife, yes,” interrupted the Doctor. “Quite typical in Osirian's society.”

“Really?” frowned Daniel, momentarily derailed.

The Doctor didn't pay him any mind: “She was nearly as nasty as him, I'm told. Never met her, though.”

“It was all true, then? All the myths? They were all just alien stories?”

“Pretty much. The tales of the Osirians were remembered in Egyptian mythology for generations. And then they were taken over by the Goa'uld.”

“The who?”

The Doctor looked at him, appearing startled for a moment, and then gave him an unconvincing bright smile: “Oh, never mind that. Come have a look, instead. What does this look like to you?”

Feeling as if he was walking in an unsettling dream, Daniel slowly drew nearer and tried to see what 'this' was.

The Doctor leaned down and picked up a fragment of an octagonal stone coin with an unrecognisable pattern on it: “Interesting,” he muttered. He looked at Daniel with satisfaction: “Not as bad as it could be.”

“What? What is it?” the archaeologist asked anxiously.

“Grahwwonds. They're pirates.” The Doctor grinned madly. “Scavengers. They travel around the universe and steal, pilfer, plunder, filch everything they can scrounge without too much danger to themselves. They prey on the wreckages of other civilizations.”

“Grownds.”

“...More or less.”

“Ok. Ok. They're aliens, yes?”

“Oh, yes. Shouldn't have arrived in this galaxy for another five centuries, but like I said... pirates. Likely as not, they stole someone else's time travel technology and ended up here by mistake. Wouldn't have stopped them, of course. They're a very unflappable species.”

“So they were thrown into a different place and time and they just... went on pirating?”

“Why wouldn't they?”

Daniel turned the odd coin over and over in his hand and tried again: “Grahw-wounds.”

“Oh, much better pronunciation!” cheered the Doctor.

“Alien tomb robbers,” dead-panned Daniel.

“That's the Grahwwonds for you!” nodded the Doctor enthusiastically.

“Right.”

There was a long moment of meaningful silence. It didn't seem as if the Doctor was picking up on the meaning of it at all.

“ 'Not as bad as it could be', you said,” prompted Daniel.

“That's right.”

“That isn't the same as 'good'.”

“Ah... Thing is, Grahwwonds tend to like... traps,” replied the Doctor.

Another moment of silence. “Excuse me?”

“It's kind of like their signature,” insisted the alien blithely. “A way of saying 'a Grahwwond pirate was here'. Like those graffiti of yours, that kind of thing.” He looked mighty pleased with himself as he concluded: “Only... they prefer traps that get sprung by the next unfortunate to follow in their steps.”

“They litter the places they plunder with traps to mark their passage?”

“Yes. It's a matter of pride to them,” said the Doctor earnestly.

“Fascinating!”

“It is!” agreed the Doctor enthusiastically. “Also a little dangerous.” He turned abruptly to the sarcophagus and started poking and prodding it here and there. “Now if only...”

“DOCTOR!”


	2. You're going to see all sorts of things:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Ancient Egyptians did not have technology!” yelled Daniel.  
> “Their gods did!” the Doctor yelled back.

Something had given under his probing hands and suddenly, a vivid blue light had flared around Daniel's feet; an instant later, the archaeologist was dangling upside down from the ceiling, held in place by nothing visible, flailing and panicking: “Doctor!” he shouted again, his glasses tumbling down along with the content of half his pockets.

“Hold on! Stay still!” the Doctor yelled back. One hand was raised towards Daniel's hanging form in a reassuring gesture, the other was fiddling with his not-torch-thingie. “Just keep calm!”

“Something's dangling me from the ceiling!” screamed Daniel. “How do you expect me to stay calm!”

Gravity was determinedly attempting to drag his shirt over his head and Daniel was fighting it ineffectually.

“It's just their version of a rolling snare!” the Doctor assured him. “It shouldn't harm you. Bit like bungee-jumping, only without the jumping. Just enjoy the view!”

“I'm afraid of heights!” yelled Daniel. His panicked flailing was making him swing and sway and it was making him sick.

“Alright, alright! I'm getting you down!” exclaimed the Doctor.

Unfortunately, right at that moment he stepped on another trigger and a slab of the floor gave out under him, plunging him into a pit. By sheer luck, he managed to grab the edge of the hole with a hand and halted his fall. Only sandy gravel skid and dropped into the trap.

Now the two of them were dangling symmetrically, one above the other.

“Oops,” he commented cheerfully.

Daniel screamed again.

“Not to worry!” the Doctor called out and waved his not-torch a little. “I've still got this!”

He promptly put it between his teeth to have his hands free. He tried to heave himself out, but while he was fumbling about, seeking a handhold, he accidentally pulled a hidden lever instead. A volley of green laser blast erupted from both sides of the room, colliding in the middle with a burst of deadly sparkles.

“Stop touching things!” yelled Daniel in a panic.

The Doctor got himself out at last, moving a little more cautiously, and took a moment to dust his leather jacket off.

“Blimey, they were really thorough! Must have found a good loot!” he commented.

Then he grabbed his metal stick firmly and pointed it at Daniel, who instinctively recoiled, giving himself even more momentum to sway. He whimpered.

“Try and stay still!” grumbled the Doctor.

Daniel snarled at him.

The soft buzz of the little device filled the chamber, a strange tune accompanied by their harsh breaths.

“Aha!” exclaimed the Doctor after a moment, dropping his hands by his sides. “It's a trigger trap!”

“What?” yelped Daniel, who between the adrenaline rush and the blood going to his head was starting to feel confused.

“I can't take you down.”

“WHAT?!”

“If I disable the force-field that's holding you up, it'll act as a trigger for a series of other traps that are presumably all around us. Very clever. Very clever indeed.”

“I don't care how clever this is, just take me down!”

“In a moment. We have to disable the other traps before...” He moved slowly in a circle, metal device held out and buzzing, scanning their surroundings. “...oh. Oh!”

“What? What!”

“They're all connected... all of them... and the hub of all the triggers... is right above you!”

Daniel renewed his efforts to fumble with his clothes and tried to see the ceiling beyond his own feet, hands reaching towards his knees and grabbing futilely at his trousers.

“Doctor Jackson!” called the Doctor. “You have to reach above your feet and switch the triggers off!”

“I can't!” shouted Daniel, terrified.

“Of course you can!”

Moaning to himself, Daniel let himself fall back into the uncomfortable position and closed his eyes, drawing a few breaths. He was hoping to calm and centre himself. It didn't quite work.

“Come on, Daniel!” came the Doctor's voice, encouraging. “Just reach up and find the control panel. You don't have to worry about falling. The force-field will hold you, I promise.”

Swallowing convulsively, Daniel metaphorically braced himself and then forced himself to try the kind of abdominal exercise he'd always hated back in high school. His muscles protested, but they did the job, to his immense relief, and he quickly found a couple of cracks to hold on to: it was all well and good to trust an invisible force-field, but what if he accidentally switched it off?

Gulping air down, he called back shakily: “What... what do I do now?”

The Doctor leaped cautiously to one of the bulky lamps and turned it around to point at Daniel's body, crouched upside down on the ceiling.

What had been a confusing collection of dancing shadows abruptly became a very detailed collection of harsh surfaces and sharp ridges under the blazing light.

“Look around yourself! Try and figure out what technology they've used. There has to be a control panel or something like that.”

“How can I possibly know what an alien control panel looks like?!” shouted Daniel, feeling panic mount again.

“The grahwwonds are scavengers and thieves! They would have used the technology they found at the site they robbed!”

“Ancient Egyptians did not have technology!” yelled Daniel.

“Their gods did!”

“What?”

“Tust me, it'll look Egyptian to you. Come on, Doctor Jackson. You're an expert on this! Find the controls!”

Daniel closed his eyes again and squared his jaw, reaching for the inner strength that had supported him through rows of childhood bullies, countless nights of feverish study, instance after instance of derision-filled attempts at conferences and presentations.

“Right.” He snapped open his eyes and dared to move one hand over the area of the ceiling he was attached to (the other was still holding onto the rock for dear life). “Hidden panel, hidden panel... gotcha!”

A somewhat smoother surface budged under his hand and his pushed and pulled until it got loose. Underneath it there was a jumble of cables, strings, buttons, metallic parts and pebbles stuck in strategic places.

He wasn't an expert, but it looked like a shoddy job, jury-rigged in a hurry, and if he wasn't mistaken, they'd cannibalized at least one human lamp along with whatever technology had, indeed, been in the prison-tomb.

To his growing shock, Daniel realized that he was indeed able to decipher the signs on some of the buttons and parts: “It's hieratic!” he called out in shock. “The simpler writing system used for accounts and legal, medical and mathematical texts!”

He felt like laughing, incredulity and delight bubbling up inside him.

“Hold on. I know this!” he exclaimed to himself, recognising some of the writings: “It's a spell to make an _ushabti_ work for its owner in the underworld!”

Comprehension bloomed into his mind: “Of course! Of course! The _ushabtiu_ were intended to act as substitutes for the deceased, should he or she be called upon to do manual labor in the afterlife – they're what would activate the traps if this was magic!”

Forgetting to be afraid of heights in his enthusiasm, he turned to look at the Doctor, who was watching him with his arms crossed over his chest and a satisfied, trusting grin on his upturned face, and shouted excitedly: “This is making an extraordinary amount of sense!”

The Doctor gave him thumbs up and Daniel turned back to the slapdash control panel.

“Right... right. Here we go.” His free hand ran quickly over the marked buttons, translating and discarding hastily as he went along, until he found it: “Yes, yes, 'folded cloth' for secrecy, then the servant... 'stick' for stopping... and 'hand' for command!”

He punched the sequence in quickly, feeling utterly certain that it was correct, and with a far too loud click, something reacted.

Daniel held his breath.

A long moment of utter silence, then another...

“Good job, Doctor Jackson!” The Doctor shouted with sincere joy. “Now it's my turn.”

In a moment, he was bouncing all over the room, blaring his buzzing little device at random spots.

Before he knew it, a rather giddy Daniel was lowered to the floor, more gently that he'd expected. Panting harshly with the aftereffects of both fear and elation, he patted himself down, once to check he was in one piece, then again to try and smooth his clothes down.

The Doctor slapped him enthusiastically on the shoulder and handed him his glasses, miraculously intact: “Really good job, there! Knew you had it in you.”

He flared his not-torch at the last of the triggers and even the pit in the floor disappeared seamlessly. “There! That was the last of it disabled. We can go now.”

“What is that thing, anyway?” asked Daniel, finally giving in to his curiosity.

“A sonic screwdriver.” The Doctor was grinning his daft, ear-to-ear smile.

“A _sonic_ screwdriver.”

“Yup!”

“A sonic _screwdriver_.”

“Very useful,” the Doctor nodded proudly.

Daniel Jackson, renown madman, widely considered delusional, stared at him, mouth agape: “I can't believe someone thought to invent a sonic screwdriver!”

The Doctor looked at him strangely: “You just used alien technology disguised as Egyptian magic to disarm a trap left behind by extraterrestrial pirates... and the thing you find it hard to believe is my sonic screwdriver?”

“...Right. Well. When you put it that way.”

They got out in silence.

The Doctor didn't seem inclined to talk unnecessarily, though he had a spring in his step that spoke of his satisfaction; and Daniel, well. He was dealing with delayed shock or something, to be sure, because he was feeling light-headed and faintly nauseous. Some part of him was also attempting to digest the frankly disturbing amount of impossibilities that he'd racked up since meeting this mad, fantastic alien that had come to Earth to...

“Why have you come to Earth again?” he found himself saying out loud.

The Doctor gave him a blank gaze: “To check on Sutekh,” he explained with exaggerated patience.

Daniel frowned, but the Doctor motioned for silence, jerking his head towards the guard they'd passed coming in.

For some weird reason, Daniel was more disconcerted by the poor man's presence than he'd been by Ancient Egyptians writings on an electrical control panel. Shouldn't the world have changed as much as he himself had in those short hours?

Instead, the man was still in his normal position and even nodded normally in greeting as they passed, cool as a cucumber.

Daniel frowned at himself, vaguely aware that perhaps that wasn't as normal as all that after all. Then he shrugged it off: he was too tired to figure out what was real and what was not just then. And he was probably in shock anyway.

Once they were back into the borrowed Jeep and on their way back (having masterfully avoided all other vehicles, buildings and sturdy tents in the area, despite Daniel's very founded misgivings about the Doctor's ability as a driver), the archaeologist tried again: “But why were you checking the prison-tomb? How did you even know there was anything to check?”

“Intercepted a warning signal from my Tardis...” The Doctor trailed off the explanation that he'd begun at a rapid pace and seemed to mull things over for a bit. Then, quite out of the blue, he asked: “Have you ever heard the name Marcus Scarman?”

“Of course! He was a great man, Fellow and Professor of Archaeology at All Souls College, Oxford University,” said Daniel warmly. Scarman was a man he'd always admired, a pioneer of modern archaeology. “He disappeared in 1911, after finding the burial chamber of the Pyramid of Horus, which he was excavating at the time. There's a lot of nonsensical talk of a curse that supposedly killed him for profaning the tomb...”

“It wasn't a curse,” his strange companion muttered darkly.

Daniel froze. “What do you mean? Are you-” he gasped and raised a hand as if to warn off the truth he was starting to glimpse: “Are you trying to tell me that he was killed by- by something in that burial chamber?” His eyes widened: “Was it something alien?”

“Yeah... more or less.”

The Doctor turned to look at Daniel earnestly, ignoring the road: “What really happened was, he was blasted by an energy laser released by the statue of Sutekh.”

The car swerved abruptly and Daniel grabbed the frame of his seat, paling with fright: “D-Doctor, shouldn't you watch...”

“And that happened because when he discovered the inner chamber, he also discovered Sutekh himself, thereby accidentally allowing him a chance of escape, by way of controlling Scarman's corpse to construct a rocket aimed at the Eye of Horus on Mars,” went on the Doctor obliviously.

“...where you're going- wait. Wait. The Eye of Horus on _Mars_?!”

“Yup.”

“The- the Eye of Horus? The symbol of protection, royal power and good health?”

The Doctor glanced distractedly at the road, adjusted their course by swerving madly towards the right direction and turned to Daniel, raising an eyebrow.

“It was carved on talismans to protect from curses. Sailors would paint the symbol on the bow of their vessel to ensure safe sea travel,” Daniel blabbed on, simply incapable of letting go of the few certainties that he still retained.

“They also used to make funerary amulets in that shape,” told him the Doctor, looking amused.

“What has that got to do with Mars?” almost wailed Daniel.

“As it happens, the particular Eye of Horus I'm talking about is – no, sorry, was – an Osirian device that beamed a signal from a pyramid on Mars down to Sutekh's prison here on Earth, suppressing his powers so that he couldn't break out. Which... come to think of it, isn't that far from the traditional role of warding off evil. Huh. Point for mythology, I guess.” The Doctor looked faintly impressed.

“There's a pyramid on Mars?!?”

“Not anymore, there isn't.”

“Why not?” asked Daniel weakly, past the point of disbelief and fast approaching outright mental rejection.

The Doctor sighed: “Friend of mine and I, we managed to destroy the rocket, but then things got... complicated. Long story short, the Eye on Mars was destroyed, Sutekh was freed and then had to be trapped in a time tunnel with a length that was longer than an Osirian lifespan in order to prevent total annihilation of the universe.”

Daniel took a deep breath and tried to ignore the way his stomach was lurching by focusing on another matter entirely: “Could he really have destroyed the entire universe? I mean, it's the universe! It's... huge and, and- full of... stuff and...”

“Sutekh's power was immense,” said the Doctor gravely. “He could destroy entire stellar systems without breaking a sweat. Throw a man into agonising pain and leave him there for centuries with barely a thought. Telepathically turn other species into puppets to his will. Reanimate corpses and focus his power through them, enabling them to burn people to death with a touch.”

Daniel paled more and more as he listened to the unusually grim Doctor's tale.

“And he was obsessed. He was paranoid, sure, but also extremely intelligent and patient. Nothing could have stopped him had he been released. Nothing _could_ stop him. He simply cannot be allowed to escape the Time Tunnel. It would be the end of the world – of every world.”

There was a grim silence for a minute.

“That's unbelievable,” whispered Daniel, tasting bile on his tongue.

“Oh, you haven't heard the half of it.”

The Doctor grinned so suddenly that Daniel jumped in his seat, startled.

“Problem is, Sutekh still retained a cult of followers, and cults don't disappear just because the god they worship is defeated,” said his alien companion blithely. “Now, on the whole, this wouldn't be a problem... or, not much of one. But! When a member of that cult finds a 51st century communication artefact accidentally drifting through what he thinks is the space-time continuum and just so happens to have a master's degree in Electrotechnical Engineering that makes him able to reverse engineer it and twist it to the purpose of contacting his god, which isn't really a god but very much an imprisoned, scarily powerful alien... Then it is a problem.”

“Right,” said Daniel weakly.

Distantly, he noticed that the excessive speeding and careless driving weren't even bothering him anymore. Perspective and all that.

“You came here to prevent them from freeing him,” he said slowly. Then frowned: “So... you're what, a jailer? A maintenance worker?”

The Doctor stared at him in outraged shock. “No!” he protested and went on muttering about ridiculous apes.

Daniel wasn't listening: “Is he going to escape, though? I mean, I get it that it was alien pirates instead of alien psychos this time, but is there going to be a next time? How do you escape from a Time Tunnel anyway?”

“Technically, you don't. It's impossible, end of the story.”

Relieved but confused, Daniel blurted out: “Then why are you here?”

“Just checking out things for now. I told you, I got a signal on the Tardis while I was passing by, it worried me. I feared he was getting free. It seems the fanatical engineer was just delusional, instead.” He grinned that daft grin of his.

In a sudden bout of uncharacteristic snark, Daniel snarled: “That's a real pity. I was so looking forward to battling insane aliens bent on destroying the Earth.”

“Oh, don't worry. You might have missed out on ol' Sutekh, but you'll get plenty of Goa'uld in exchange, isn't that great? Don't look at me like that. You'll handle them no problem. Well, some problems. But anyway. They'll make your life a lot more interesting!”

Daniel stared at him in horrified fascination: “You're mad. Completely bonkers.”

The Doctor frowned at him in a way that looked almost like pouting.

Night had fallen over the valley temple when they stood once more in front of the odd police phone box where everything had started. It was freezing cold and Daniel had his hands under his armpits in a futile attempt at convincing himself his fingers weren't about to fall off. The Doctor, for his part, looked utterly unaffected.

The vaguely shell-shocked archaeologist stood shivering and just looked at the slightly battered, rectangular shape of that improbable space ship.

“Are you alright?” asked the Doctor unexpectedly.

Daniel almost jumped in mild fright. “Ah! Yes, yes,” he lied, teeth chittering in the cold. “Fine.”

The Doctor gave him a long, measured look.

Daniel shook his head a little frantically: “Absolutely fine, really. Just...” He sighed helplessly. “This is unbelievable.”

“More or less unbelievable than the pyramids being parking spots?” the Doctor pointed out cheekily.

Daniel grimaced: “Very funny. It's just... a lot to take in,” he said, feeling lost. “If I hadn't seen all those things for myself...”

“Yeah... about that.” The Doctor leaned with nonchalance against the door of his Tardis, but Daniel got the impression of taut tension radiating from him nonetheless. “Want to see some more?”

Shuddering in the freezing darkness, Daniel stumbled a little: “Sorry, what did you just say?”

“I thought you might like to come along for a ride,” said the Doctor, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “As a thank-you kind of thing,” he added. “Since you sort of saved my life. More or less.”

Hardly able to process what he was being offered, Daniel gaped at the time traveller: “You... you mean...”

“Yeah. Come on! Just the one trip, mind. See a little of 2500 B.C. and then get back.”

“You're taking me to Ancient Egypt.”

“Yup.”

“Oh my God. Oh. My. God. You're taking me to Ancient Egypt!”

“If you want. I mean-”

“YES!”

“Alright, then. Come in.” The Doctor's voice disappeared into the cavernous insides of a police box that was, most definitely, not a police box.

Daniel remained rooted just outside the doors, gaping like a fish.

But only for a moment: then his brain kicked in and he ran inside at full speed, only to slow down and gape once more at the wide, luxuriant interior, all shades of greens and blues and welcoming oranges and technological gadgetry and grates on the floor and huge coral-like trunks and, and, and...

“It's... bigger on the inside,” he almost whimpered.

The Doctor gave a long-suffering sigh: “Yes. Yes, it is.”

The Doctor started inputting commands and fiddling with the controls, running here and there all around the central console. The core flared up and down with energy and the trumpeting elephants sounds started up again.

Daniel just turned slowly on himself, mouth agape, taking in the patterned hexagons impressions on the golden walls and spying weird writings on a monitor and the sticky notes on it that made his heart beat wildly with the excitement of a scholar before a major discovery; until a violent jerk threw him onto the floor.

“Oops!” was the only reply to his indignant cry.

Another tremor shook the Tardis; Daniel dragged himself to the nearest railing while the Doctor banged on the console with a spanner, then they were thrust aside by a violent jolt.

The Doctor, evidently used to the jerky shakes, managed to hold onto some handholds and kept busying himself with odd-looking levers and buttons; but Daniel was just knocked here and there, until he felt like a giant bruise.

“Right! Here we go!” shouted the Doctor far too cheerfully.

They materialized with a teeth-clattering thump and Daniel was no longer able to keep his comment for himself: “Seems you aren't any better at driving alien stuff than you are with human cars.”

“I'm an excellent driver!” protested the Doctor, offended.

“Matter of opinion,” muttered Daniel, glaring at him while he picked himself up and grumbling under his breath about the obvious need for intergalactic driving licences.

The Doctor glowered: “Did I, or did I not get you where you wanted to go?” he demanded testily. “I dare you to find someone else able to, especially on that backward little planet of yours!”

But Daniel wasn't listening anymore: his eyes widened with hope and he ran to the door, forgetting everything else in his hurry to wrench it open.

A pleasant, sunny picture of whites and greens and sandy browns was framed by the blue doors of the Tardis.

They were on the quay sides of some small town and the Nile flew peaceful and immutable by, just a few meters to their left, beautiful and serene. The quay, by contrast, was as lively and bustling as an active market place could be.

Daniel stepped out into the noise and confusion of that dream come true with a sense of awe he hadn't felt since he was a little child.

Small boats were rocking gently where they were docked, the theatre of incessant comings and goings. Barefooted men in short, white loinclothes and women with eyes lined with kohl and dresses with straps wrapped round the body mingled and mixed in the area, chatting, discussing, telling tales or asking questions, bartering and peddling.

Farmers' wives showed off cloth or fowl to bronze-skinned sailors ready to trade small sacks of grain. A woman a mere few feet from them was selling bread to a group of young men; beside her a sailor was exchanging fish for figs. Children ran every which way in groups, getting underfoot. On the other side of the road, two older women were handing out beer in small jars, while a little further, a loud buyer was checking out some vegetables and complaining about their quality, garnering angry replies from the seller.

Everywhere things were passing hands in exchange for other things; the place was full of cheerful or shrewd bartering, generous or hard bargains.

Daniel stumbled around, speechless, drinking it all in. He did not have enough eyes and kept turning around and around on himself, in an effort to make the most of his mere two.

It was beyond fantastic.

Amused, the Doctor leaned against his Tardis, arms crossed over his chest, and watched his guest run up to a knot of chatting people on one end of the marketplace only to let himself be captivated by a shady dealer showing off tourmaline stones on the other.

A deep, if weak, humming voice, captured Daniel's attention and he stopped to stare at a thin old man sitting crosslegged on a straw mat, fiddling with a set of scales: “ _Do not move the scales nor alter the weights, Nor diminish the fractions of the measure..._ ”

The Doctor joined him with laid back ease and Daniel found his voice and wits: “It's the 'Wisdom of Amenemope'!” he whispered loudly, gesticulating to the old man. He was bursting with so much excitement that he was trembling. “He's singing the teachings of Amenemope! That's amazing, it was dated at least 1500 years later than this! It's... Hold on, it's impossible.”

He turned to the Doctor, looking rather wild: “He's singing in English. How can he possibly be singing in English?!”

“He's not. You're just hearing it.”

“What?”

“It's the Tardis, it... well, it's a bit complicated but basically... oh, just go with the flow, why don't you?”

“Yeah... yeah, I will...”

Dazed, Daniel kept staring happily around, an incredulous, delighted smile upon his face. “I'm in Egypt,” he whispered reverently.

“Yup! The bubastite district of Am-Khent, to be precise. And it's...” the Doctor made a show to check his wristwatch: “...the end of Ahket, the flooding season.”

Daniel let out a whoop of pure joy.

Something was happening. The people – merchant and buyers, farmers and sailors; women and men alike – were all moving towards the riverbank, joyously calling out to each other and to the boats that were floating leisurely down the Nile.

The Doctor and Daniel moved with the crowd and found a good spot from where to watch the papyrus boats, filled with men and women whose white clothes seemed to shine in the sun. Most men were playing a compelling tune on lotus pipes and it drifted to the awaiting crowd along with the festive rhythms of the cymbals rattled by the women. The cheering spectators, Daniel among them, enthusiastically accompanied the music with hand clapping.

“It's the procession in honour of Bast,” told him the Doctor.

Daniel's smile widened as he hastily recalled what he knew of the lioness-headed goddess of Lower Egypt.

“Further north, where her biggest temple lies, they'll be carrying her statue out on the Nile before returning it to the temple until next year,” went on the Doctor. “Here in the smaller settlements, it's just about letting those who couldn't afford to travel up there this year see a bit of the Feast.”

The boats docked gracefully and the musicians disembarked, swiftly arranging themselves in a joyous line.

The two time travellers watched them pass and then mingled with the commoners following the procession in chaotic companionship, happy and rowdy.

Daniel was overjoyed to find out that his odd appearance – glasses and cargo pants and all – didn't faze the locals at all. They all welcomed him and the endless questions he couldn't hold back with a careless: “You're a foreigner, aren't you? From the North, with those colours.” And then they proceeded to instruct him on anything and everything from how to walk to what to eat.

They were treating him a bit as if he was a child, but not unkindly and the archaeologist was fascinated by this confirmation that the sense of identity of the ancient Egyptians was based on culture rather than ethnicity or race.

A matronly woman even told him encouragingly: “You already speak properly. That's a better start than most savages!” And a sanctimonious man with greyer skin then the rest (perhaps he was ill?) claimed patronizingly: “It is the duty of the blessed who live in the land of maat, the divine order, to educate the uncivilised. Listen to us, do as we say, and you'll be one of the People soon.”

Too awed to feel insulted, Daniel gratefully soaked up everything they were telling him, frantically comparing what he was seeing and experiencing with what he'd gleaned from his studies. It was fascinating on such an intense level that he could never have imagined it and he let himself be swept up in their celebrations with growing exuberance.

The procession walked a rough circle around the town, then returned to the river and left, picking up the unusual music once more; the locals cheered them away and then turned to a less dignified but much more spontaneous celebration, with shouting and dances and what were possibly games and a lot of elaborate food and beverages.

Daniel was surprised to be handed a bowl of sweet-scented wine: he was told laughingly that beer was for the days of work, but only wine could honour the great Bast. It was very strange wine, too, denser and more concentrated than he was used to, with a spicy but cool aftertaste. He drank it down and was promptly poured some more.

At one point, he realized that he could no longer see the Doctor, but he found it difficult to get worked up about it just then. He reasoned that it was only natural to get lost in such a crowd and since he was sure he remembered where the Tardis was, there was no need to feel any upset.

Swept up in the general enthusiasm, he forgot everything that wasn't the joyous celebration around him and hardly noticed that his welcoming hosts kept pouring him – and themselves – more and more wine. After all, it was only natural. Plenty of Egyptian sources recommended to appease leonine goddesses with the 'feasts of drunkenness'.

“Drink, foreigner!” they laughed uproariously. “Drink to the Divine Mother who crushes the Snake and protects the People! Drink and you won't want to leave the beautiful land of maat ever again!”

“I already don't,” Daniel informed them, slurring.

Everybody laughed even louder, and cheered, and poured him more wine.

That was how the Doctor found him, lying in a heap of other men, all lazily stretched like plump cats.

“There you are!” he exclaimed, relieved. “Sorry about abandoning you.”

“ 'Snot pr'blm,” mumbled Daniel, feeling fuzzy in a sweetly happy way.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow, amused: “It is said that more wine is drunk in these days of feasting than in all the rest of the year!” he declared, grinning from ear-to-ear. “Seems you've done your part to help with that!”

Daniel gave him a loopy grin and uttered a sleepy: “Whe' were y'?”

“Just...” the Doctor gestured vaguely. “Shouldn't have wandered off, I guess, but I spotted a minor problem downtown and got a bit distracted. You wouldn't believe the amount of troubles an abandoned Goa'uld artefact could do in the hands of a well-meaning medic! Had to disable it. Did you have fun in the meanwhile?”

Daniel nodded amiably, not entirely interested – except that one of the words he'd just heard didn't make any sense. He didn't much like when words didn't make sense. This problem was interfering with the nice buzz all around his head and he didn't much like that, either. So he asked: “Wha' on E'rth 's a Gow...tha'?”

“There aren't any on Earth,” replied the Doctor unconcernedly. “At least, not that I know of.”

Daniel giggled, because that wasn't an answer at all, and that made it funny.

The Doctor raised his eyebrows again and chuckled: “Come on, let's get you out of here.”

He leaned down to pick Daniel up, but the archaeologist didn't like to be jostled. His stomach didn't like it either: “Don' wanna,” he whined. “Wanna know.” He nodded decisively to strengthen his declaration.

“Oh, don't worry. If historians don't lie, you're going to be quite the expert about them in a few years,” the Doctor told him cheerfully, and raised him over his shoulder effortlessly.

Daniel whined again, this time wordlessly.

“But if you truly insist,” told him the Doctor while moving swiftly towards the Tardis, “then I'll tell you that the Goa'ulds were the false gods that ruled this country by fear and oppression, all the while suppressing the technological progress in its population.”

“Gods 're real!” protested Daniel, feeling dizzy and not in a good way. He frowned, somehow aware that it had sounded a lot better in his head. It wasn't all that important, though, and sleep sounded better than arguing anyway.

“Nope,” retorted the Doctor, lingering on the final popping sound. “See, that's what they do: they use advanced alien technology to present themselves as omnipotent and thus they rule. Until there is a rebellion, of course. That's one thing you can always count on humans for. You're exceptionally prone to give other races a chance to take control and dominate you, one could almost think you like it, really – easy life and all that; except that as soon as you're oppressed – or given a few generations of it – you stand up and shout 'No' in the bravest, bloodiest ways ever. It's disconcerting.”

“Hmm,” managed Daniel, whose mind had stopped registering the meaning of words a while ago.

The Doctor propped him up against the doors of the Tardis and scrutinized him, growing worried: “Doctor Jackson? Daniel? I hope this is just you not holding your alcohol well, Daniel, because you really look like shit.”

The sonic screwdriver whirred, scanning the archaeologist's pupils. “Can you even hear me? Did you eat something you didn't recognize? Or drink? What was it? Daniel, look at me!”

Daniel's head lolled: “Tir'd,” he mumbled. “Don' wanna.”

“Damn it!” grumbled the Doctor. “You're stoned. Why is it that I can never take you stupid apes anywhere without you finding troubles?”

Thanks to the Tardis' medbay, it became easily evident that the wine had been spiked with blue lotus.

The Doctor sighed in relief: it was nothing dangerous, it just caused a state of relaxed inhibitions, generally making the users more talkative, comfortable, and aroused. Of course, it had been administered with wine, and alcohol enhanced the effects of the active chemicals. So Daniel was looking forward to a lengthy period of induced lassitude and blissful sleep.

The Doctor gave a put-upon sigh and set about taking him back.

When he dropped the sleeping form of the archaeologist gently on the cheap hotel bed, he murmured: “It was good to meet you, Doctor Jackson. I don't know how much of this you'll remember, considering the amount of blue lotus you ingested, but... I won't forget you.”

He thoughtfully considered the passed out form: “Maybe I'll drop in on you sometime or other. After all, you're going to have a fantastic life! And you certainly liked the time travelling bit...”

Then a sudden idea lit up his eyes: “Oh, that's what I forgot to tell her!”

And with a manic grin, he was off once more, aiming for 21st century London, and an intriguing blonde girl.


	3. Ghosts from the past,

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Sherlock... This is THE Doctor we're talking about!”  
> “Doctor who?” asked Sherlock in indifferent confusion.  
> “Yeah, him!” exclaimed John with glee.

It was a normal day when it happened. Honest. Well, as normal as John's life could get since he'd met Sherlock, which... wasn't very normal at all, yeah; but on the upside, it was interesting, which was much more important to John.

Anyway, it was a quiet day. They'd been to a crime scene, but it turned out to be a boring one because Sherlock noticed the fake teeth from a vampire costume, even if no-one else had, and the smear of invisible ink for readmission stamping to a nearby club where a masquerade had taken place the night before, and he'd worked the whole thing out in fifteen seconds flat, down to the attempt at misdirection via a copy of someone else's costume the killer had tried to fool them with.

Lestrade had been reluctantly impressed, Anderson had been not-so-reluctantly flustered, John had been amazed and heaped enough compliments on Sherlock that the detective had graciously agreed to eat; so they were on their way to Angelo's for a companionable lunch.

In John's book, things couldn't get much better.

Which is why he groaned when Sherlock stopped abruptly at the mouth of a narrow alley and said urgently: “John!”

A moment later he was hurrying down the alley and John, of course, was right behind him, even if he had no clue about what had captured the genius' attention this time.

“John, look at this!”

'This' was an old telephone box, the usual size and shape, only painted blue instead of red. John grinned to himself, thinking that it looked just like the Tardis. It was even tucked away into a convenient corner!

Of course, most telephone boxes, regular or otherwise, were pushed out of the way these days. Not much use for them anymore, what with all the mobile phones.

Nevertheless, John felt his grin widen as he told Sherlock: “It's a police public call box.”

Sherlock stared at him. Then he frowned: “It isn't.”

John blinked: “What? Of course it is. Isn't it?”

He quickly checked the instructional label on the little compartment that held the phone. It said _Police Telephone - Free for Use of Public - Advice and Assistance Obtainable Immediately - Officers and Cars Respond to Urgent Calls - Pull to Open_.

“See?” he told Sherlock. “Just an old phone box.” He pulled the somewhat battered hinged door and tried the phone. “Disconnected, though,” he said off-handedly. “Not that that's strange.”

“Oh, really?” asked Sherlock, dark and sarcastic.

John looked at him in surprise: “Well, it's not like they're used anymore, are they? Nowadays if you want to get help from the police, you use a mobile phone!” He shrugged: “Didn't think there were any left around, to be honest.”

“That's the point, John. There aren't any,” retorted Sherlock grimly. “This kind of fixed kiosks might have been common during the sixties, but nowadays they have all been withdrawn from service. Police officers today carry mobile phones, or at least two-way radios!”

“Ok,” said John slowly. He shrugged. “Maybe this is just a leftover. It's disabled and everything, Sherlock, it could have just been left behind for whatever reason...”

“Except that it wasn't, because it wasn't here two days ago,” retorted Sherlock. “Nor at any time I came this way before that.”

John watched his best friend steadily: “Look, I know you have memorized every street in London, and far be it from me to doubt your memory, but couldn't you have just... forgotten this?”

Sherlock shot him an incensed look.

“Maybe you deleted it!” protested John. “You delete all sorts of things.”

“I don't delete _useful_ things, John,” replied Sherlock with great dignity. Then, at his blogger's unimpressed look, he huffed: “Police boxes typically had enough space that they could provide shelter, or, as was often the case, to temporarily house an arrested individual inside and keep him under lock until transport to a station could be arranged,” he rattled off pedantically. “That might potentially be useful. I wouldn't have deleted something like that!”

“Ok. Well. I can't think of any other explanation, Sherlock. Because it's pretty clear that this has been here for ages.”

“No, it hasn't.”

“What, just because you don't remember...”

“John, don't you ever _observe_?” hissed Sherlock. “Look at the surface! There are no cracks in the finish and no dark streaks from moisture damage. We're in London! If it had been here for any length of time, it would have been exposed to rain, fog... humidity of all sorts!”

He ran a hand over the wood, not stopping his running commentary: “Few stains; raised wood grain, dry rough feeling, this hasn't been in the weather long... It's a little battered, but doesn't look like it needs any immediate restoration work; but it isn't anything like new either. Conclusion, it's been in and out of the open air countless times. Except that if that was the case, the finish should be needing to be reapplied, or appear to have been reapplied recently; instead it doesn't look like it's even beginning to fail and there's no evidence that it isn't the original coat.”

He turned to John, who was watching him with his usual, admiring half-smile, and scowled: “It's completely inconsistent with the traces of weather and degradation on the wall behind it. Not to mention that there are no graffiti on it! There are dubiously artistic expressions scribbled, scratched, or sprayed illicitly on almost every surface of this alley low enough to be reached, _except_ for this box. What's protecting it from defacement? And look at the hinges!” he pointed dramatically, warming to the subject. “The wear pattern shows that these doors are almost always opened inwards, but a real police box door would open outwards...”

“So this isn't a real police phone box?”

“Obviously not!”

“Oh, I get it,” said John, smile suddenly widening.

“What? What do you get?”

“Someone's doing a practical joke, Sherlock, that's all – I doubt it's a crime.”

The consulting detective looked at him in slight confusion: “What kind of practical joke?”

John looked back with pitying incredulity: “I need to get you in front of a TV more often.”

“Pointless waste of time,” mumbled Sherlock gloomily. He was never happy with John's on and off crusade to educate him in contemporary pop culture.

John gave a drawn out, mock-put upon sigh: “This, Sherlock, is very likely the most recognisable image connected with the longest running and arguably most successful British sci-fi TV series!”

Sherlock gave him a mightily unimpressed look.

“No, seriously. The Tardis, the spaceship in the program...”

Sherlock snorted derisively.

John narrowed his eyes severely and took on a lecture-tone: “...has a chameleon circuit that got stuck in this form at one point or another.”

“A chameleon circuit,” repeated Sherlock in a dry tone. “Ridiculous.”

John ran a hand through his hair, exasperated. “It's just a TV show, Sherlock, but the point is – it's famous. Like, really, really famous. Plenty of Tardis-shaped gadgets around: play tents for children, wardrobes, DVD cabinets, toy boxes, cookie jars, book ends, key chains, bubble bath bottles...”

“Wait a minute. You have a USB hub in that shape. It's hidden among your medals in that box under your bed. It has all those pictures of that brunette in leather...”

“Yes, right, that's enough, thank you,” said John hurriedly, and gave him an annoyed look: “You know, anyone else would be getting _really_ upset that you invaded my privacy. _Again._ ”

Sherlock scowled: “Don't go yelling at me for something so stupid, now, John. Focus. This,” he pointed at the blue box, “is not a gadget.”

“Fan-built full-size models are pretty common,” replied John. “I think there's even a contest at that one cosplay event in Cardiff...”

“Models like that don't use this kind of quality materials, not even if they're to be used as props in a play or an amateur video filming. This is a solid street corner police box, John, wrongly built and out of place, to be sure, but real.” Sherlock examined it with the concentration he usually reserved for the Petri dishes under his microscope. “It's out of place and I will find out _why._ ”

“Well, maybe it's the real deal. The actual Tardis,” joked John.

“Oi! How do you know that?” came a completely unexpected voice from behind them.

A tall man with a leather jacket and rather conspicuous ears stood glowering at them, though not at all in a threatening way. His eyebrows shadowed clear, cerulean eyes that were far too old for any human face. For some reason, looking into those eyes John was reminded bluntly of his first deployment, on the coast of a war-ravaged Sierra Leone, and of the stormy sea there.

By his side, Sherlock scanned the newly arrived with analytical coldness.

“You're a traveller,” he declared without a big preamble. “A soldier, too – no: former military. You were in a war, but no longer feel part of something, body language says you're a loner.”

The man froze, every muscle taut with tension. John mentally sighed, preparing to do some damage control.

Sherlock went on without a care for how his string of deductions was being received: “You've got excellent self control and are used to blend in easily. You're economical in movement as well. Jumper under a leather jacket? Very modern minimalist. Monochromatic black, not a single extravagant detail. You don't want to make an impression. You cherish your loneliness. Yet your jacket gets often grabbed around the elbow... by someone who wears bright pink nail paint, looks like.”

A muscle on the man's face contracted and John felt his hackles rise at the sudden impression of looming danger.

Sherlock's frown deepened as he continued: “Northern accent, but you're familiar with London. Comfortable in its rhythm. Judging by the state of your boots, you were in Peckham recently...”

The man made a visible effort to relax and, somewhat to John's surprise, produced a very affable, if a bit disturbing, smile: “The Powell Estate, yeah,” he confirmed.

Sherlock was on a roll, and instantly wove the tidbit of information in his speech: “Traditionally a working class community; certainly not a touristy area. No hotels there. Plenty of immigrant communities, especially from Asian countries, but you sound British and don't show any somatic or cultural Asian trait, doubtful you'd have family there. So, staying at a friend's. Confirmed by the traces of banana mush on your sleeve, that indicate...”

“I like bananas!” loudly interrupted the stranger, who had apparently had enough of Sherlock's... sherlockness. “Good sources of potassium. You should eat them more, it'd do you a world of good.”

Derailed, Sherlock stared at him for an unexpectedly long moment.

“Now, if you're finished metaphorically dissecting me? I need to run this,” he waved a curved rectangle of slightly rusty metal in the air, “through some scans and also to find out who, exactly, _you_ are,” he finished pointing at John.

Sherlock bristled: “What do you want with John?” at the same time as John exclaimed, surprised: “Me? I'm... no-one. Just his friend,” he jerked a thumb at Sherlock. “Sorry about the deductions, by the way, he's got no tact, I'm afraid...”

Sherlock's protest to that declaration went ignored as the leather-clad man's eyes bore into John's: “But how do you know about my Tardis? Have we met before? No, I would remember if we had. Are we going to meet, then? Hold on, no, it would still be the past for you. Right question probably is: have _you_ met me before? That would indicate I shall meet you in my future...”

“Oh, God.” John's jaw fell in utter shock. “You're having me on.”

“Excuse me...” tried Sherlock, who never dealt well with not being the centre of attention.

Something beeped on the hunk of metal the man was holding and he tore his attention from John, fixing it on the thing instead: “No matter, time's awasting here.”

He pushed past them without a second glance and whipped out a key for the police phone box.

“This is impossible!” cried John in utter shock. But the door was already swinging open – inwards, just like Sherlock had noticed – granting him a glimpse of a golden-hued, impossibly large room with a central column that flared bright blue in greeting.

“You're the Doctor!” he shouted, his jaw falling into an expression that was equal parts incredulity and stunned elation.

The man halted on the threshold, casting a bemused look back at him: “Yeah.”

“You're real!”

An eyebrow raised in amusement: “Yup. Very real, me.” He disappeared into the Tardis, but left the door open invitingly.

“Oh, for the love of...!” grumbled Sherlock. “John, you're being completely irrational. And you!” he shouted after the stranger, but John cut him off before he could say anything unfortunate.

“He's real!”

“I can see that,” muttered Sherlock through gritted teeth. “He's right in front of us, after all. Really, could you be any more obvious, John?”

“No, you don't understand... This is _THE Doctor_ we're talking about!”

“Doctor who?” asked Sherlock in indifferent confusion.

“Yeah, him!” exclaimed John with glee.

Sherlock stared at him, nonplussed.

“Oi!” the Doctor interjected, reappearing on the threshold. “Are you coming in or what?”

Without a second thought, John bounded into the Tardis with a huge grin. An enthusiastic whoop wafted out at once.

Cursing under his breath, Sherlock stalked after him.

And promptly stopped because his mind refused to accept what his senses were perceiving. It felt worse than getting hit upon the head: his hard drive was metaphorically short-circuiting in the futile attempt to process the impossibility he was presented with.

Forcing himself to draw a deep breath, Sherlock closed his eyes firmly to shut out the faulty perceptions and took a step back, out of the blue box.

He reopened his eyes, taking in it as a whole, mind whirring with simple calculations about volumes in three-dimensional space and not-so-simple calculations about _n_ -dimensional Euclidean spaces and Stirling's approximation of the high dimensional behaviour of prismatic volumes.

He stepped back in, almost physically recoiling at the room that was much bigger than the space that appeared to contain it. It had a harmonious, organic look to it that, along with the dim, orange-greenish light, brought up unpleasantly a memory of his experimenting with psychedelic drugs that had resisted all his attempts at deletion.

The Doctor was right in the middle of it, his dark frame cast in a glow by the pulsing and twitching column of energy that was obviously the core of the place, alternately studying a monitor and fiddling with cables and strange humming tools over the metal shape he'd been carrying.

John was bouncing in place, an enormous grin on his face: “May I say it?” he asked Sherlock, looking like an excited puppy.

“Say what?” asked the Doctor, raising his head for a moment, perplexed.

John turned to him quickly: “He always gets snippy when I state the obvious,” he explained with a careless jerk of his thumb towards Sherlock, “but I _really_ want to say it.”

“Well, go on and say 'it' then,” said the Doctor with curious fascination.

“Say what?” grumbled Sherlock, still stuck on the threshold, fighting with his own understanding of reality and the conflicting perception of it he was faced with.

John threw his arms wide and cried triumphantly: “It's bigger on the inside!”

The Doctor started, then threw his head back and laughed himself silly.

Sherlock glared darkly at him and stalked inside: “That's impossible, John! All this, is impossible!” he said, much more quietly than was his wont.

Sobering up, John shot him a warm, concerned look: “Are you alright?” His joy was being somewhat dampened by Sherlock's obvious discomfort.

“This isn't possible,” repeated his friend, grasping his scarf tightly and pulling it in a far too glaring show of unease.

John was back by his side in a moment and started talking quietly: “Look, I would recommend you a healthy dose of suspension of disbelief, which is working quite well for me I assure you...”

“What?” was Sherlock's half-strangled reaction.

John smiled gently: “I've just been plunged in the middle of my favourite TV show. The probability of being woken up by your violin or one of your explosions soon and find out this is all a dream is... pretty damn high. So I'm just going to enjoy it while it lasts,” he said cheerfully.

Sherlock's lost look made him bite his lip in worry and try a different approach: “It's just a cloaking device – technology disguising what's there. An illusion. Chameleon circuit, remember?”

Sherlock could accept that – possibly – if they were in an open expanse. A field, or at least a place. He may not like illusions – in fact, he _despised_ them – but he could think of several different ways to achieve that effect, ranging from chemically-induced hallucinations and stealth tricks such as dark paint or artificial cooling to minimize electromagnetic emissions, all the way to optical metamaterials to bend light around an object.

None of them allowed for the fact that the police box from the outside occupied only a fraction of the space required for its inside.

The alley couldn't be part of the illusion, Sherlock had been there before and nothing much had changed in the surrounding environment. The box was ensconced between very real walls.

It. Was. Impossible.

John sighed: “I don't suppose you could just accept this... go with the flow, as it were?”

“Reality is more rationally intelligible than that, John, ” he said in a low, precise voice.

Silence, broken only by the Doctor's buzzing and whirling instruments far in the background and a sort of low humming all around them.

John ran a hand through his hair: “Ok, ok. I know you see the world differently. But please, let me ask you something. You taught me that it is a capital mistake to theorize without enough data.”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes and nodded jerkily.

John nodded back: “So. Will you accept that what you know _so far_ isn't enough to formulate a proper theory? And just keep gathering data for now?”

Refusing to admit the wave of relief that was surging into him at John's suggestion, Sherlock muttered something unintelligible.

John squeezed his arm briefly: “You're the one who taught me: when you've eliminated the impossible...” John was smiling gently. He didn't need to complete the quote, but stressed in a whisper: “ _However improbable_.”

A longer silence.

The Doctor was studying some readings on his monitor intently.

John sighed and turned to admire the TARDIS. “You are so lovely,” he told the ship fondly, running a gentle hand over the nearest coral strut. He wasn't remotely fazed by the fact that he was talking to a spaceship – after all, it was a _sentient_ one – and grinned in delight when she chirped a musical chime in response.

The Doctor stopped what he was doing and shot him a vaguely amazed glance.

Somehow, that was what jolted Sherlock out of his tense mood at last: “Yes, John tends to have that effect,” he told the Doctor amusedly.

“What?” his friend asked, bewildered.

But Sherlock had moved on, his thoughts spiralling down a half-dozen paths already and now that he had worked out a way to cope with the shift in the boundaries he had believed applied to reality, he was processing the situation with his customary speed, his mind busy with spanning lines of questioning, rapidly archiving new and correcting stored information and designing a few side-line experiments at the same time, so he ignored John and just marched up to the hexagonal control console.

“So... Doctor. Who are you exactly?” he questioned.

With relief, John saw that his eyes were no longer cloudy with uncertainty and were instead taking on the diamond-sharp intensity of Sherlock's problem-tackling attitude.

In light of this, the former army doctor decided to take his own advice and just go with the flow: with a last fond pat to the Tardis, he joined Sherlock and the Doctor near the console and watched them spar.

“Well?” demanded Sherlock, impatient as usual.

“Just a traveller,” was the non-committal reply.

“No one who’s ‘just a traveller’ has access to advanced cloaking technology,” pointed out Sherlock.

“They do if they get around a lot,” quipped the Doctor.

“Who do you work for?” insisted Sherlock.

“No-one. Always a freelancer, me. 'Fraid I've got a bit of a problem with authority. You know how it is.”

John's mouth quirked in a wry half-smile at that, but Sherlock's seriousness didn't waver: “No government would let you run around on your own.”

“Oh, governments!” the Doctor muttered with a sour look. “Such a bother, each and every one of 'em.”

“If you were the one who came up with all this you would be in a lab somewhere coming up with more. Or possibly being dissected. If you're just using it, then you've got handlers keeping you under control. No genius is ever left alone,” he said bitterly.

John sucked his breath in, the implications of that statement hitting him hard.

The Doctor gave them a very superior look: “Just a matter of knowing how to keep 'em in line.”

“Just _who_ are you?” demanded Sherlock, exasperation colouring his words. “You have testing tools too sophisticated and obviously costly to be just cobbled together, but they look like they are just scavenged and patched, your internet connection is as good as mine – which is saying quite a lot – even if you've basically declared yourself a field agent, and a freelancer at that, and you rely on databases not many have access to,” he said, gesturing to the monitor that, as John suddenly noticed, was displaying several internet windows at once, some of which, it was true, didn't exactly look like your run-of-the-mill search engine.

“Hypernet,” corrected the Doctor absently and gave Sherlock a measuring look: “Observant one, aren't you?”

Sherlock straightened with obvious pride but his eyes remained narrowed.

“Ok, then. Here, look. My identifications.” The Doctor got a folded piece of leather out and handed it to Sherlock. “Doctor John Smith, scientific advisor of U.N.I.T. - United Nations Intelligence Taskforce.”

“Yeah, right,” was the acidic response.

“It says so right there,” protested the Doctor. “Don't you believe me?”

Sherlock glowered and handed it back disdainfully: “It's blank.”

“What?” Startled, the Doctor turned it around automatically, as if to check it.

John grinned from ear-to-ear: “He's a genius,” he informed the Doctor smugly. “Won't work on him!” There was no mistaking the pride in his words.

“Damn,” muttered the Doctor.

“What won't work?!” hissed Sherlock.

“That's psychic paper,” explained John excitedly. “It's supposed to show you whatever he wants you to see.”

Just because, he grabbed it, startling the Doctor, and glanced it over excitedly: “Yeah, it's... wow. It really says all that. Dr. John Smith... bla bla bla... scientific consultant... it's even got the official logo on it!”

He pointed out to Sherlock the black and white image of Earth between two spread wings, and underneath it, the initials U.N.I.T., which to him were as clear as day and very official-looking; but Sherlock just gritted his teeth: “It's. _Blank._ ”

“I know! Isn't it brilliant? 'Cos I'm seeing it, you see; but then, I'm just an average idiot. Guess this proves it, you're right. You are a genius!”

“Of course I am,” agreed Sherlock thoughtfully, while the Doctor murmured: “Fascinating!”

“The question remain... who is _he_?” Sherlock asked of John, ignoring the way the strange man was scrutinizing both of them.

“He's the Doctor!” insisted John, just a little helplessly.

“You've said it more than enough times, John. There's plenty of doctors around...”

“Not like him there aren't.”

“Quite right. I'm very unique,” the man in question interjected. “Won't find anything else like me."

Sherlock glared at him.

“He really is,” John agreed wholeheartedly. Then, after a second, he turned to the Doctor and pointing a thumb at Sherlock added loyally: “So's him, though.”

“I'm beginning to think he is,” mused the Doctor. Then he shook himself: “So! You've obviously travelled with me – John, was it? And I obviously looked different then. It must have been another life. You're not too surprised though. That's interesting. I assume you know about regeneration?”

“Yeah... that is no, I mean. Oh, God, I can't believe you're real. You're probably not.” John shook his head to clear it. “Anyway. I haven't travelled with you. I know you because...” he trailed off, suddenly uncertain. “Er. Well. There's a TV show about your adventures. Kind of.”

“Kind of?” echoes Sherlock, sounding peeved. “Honestly, John!”

“Oi! Did you just say _TV show?_ ”

John's smiled hesitantly: “Hum... yeah. Yeah, you see... it's a BBC series called...” He cleared his throat. “... _Doctor Who.”_

“You mean he's an actor?” asked Sherlock with incredulous disgust.

“Nope,” denied the Doctor at once. “Not much for acting, me. Granted there was that time Goldoni needed a fill-in at the last minute when a deranged Xenonian metamorph murdered their Pantalone, but that doesn't really count. Mmm. Did a bit of vaudeville in 23rd century Broadway, too – not the one in Manhattan, the one on Alpha Centauri III, I mean...”

“That qualifies you as an actor,” pointed out Sherlock.

“I'm not an actor! I just travel a lot. You stay around for long enough, you end up doing a bit of everything!”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow mockingly.

“He's not an actor,” explained John patiently. “He's the _protagonist._ The programme narrates his adventures as he explores the universe in space and time.”

“What the hell? I'm a TV show?! That's... that's...!” The Doctor gaped.

“Interesting,” murmured Sherlock, hands joining in the prayer position before his lips.

“No. Way.” The Doctor spit out, radiating hostility. “I don't believe you.”

“Ah... may I?” asked John gesturing to the monitor.

With a distrustful look, the Doctor motioned him to go ahead.

In no time at all, John had called up thousands of results for 'Doctor Who Streaming' on the search engine and given such evidence, it didn't take long for the Doctor's distrust to turn into indignant incredulity.

“Who the hell was responsible for this insanity?” he demanded, outraged.

“Sydney Newman and Verity Lambert,” was John's prompt answer. “They were the ones who developed the original program back in the day. It aired from 1963 until 1989. Then there were only novels and audio plays from fans until 2005, when Russel T. Davies started writing again for a new BBC-produced series. Now it's mostly Steven Moffat who keeps it going...”

Both Sherlock and the Doctor stared at him in surprise.

“What!” said John defensively. “It's typical questions on trivia nights at the pub. Joe – the barman – is a great fan. So's Lestrade,” he added under his breath. Sherlock harrumphed and whipped out his smartphone, obviously intent on getting himself up to speed on this suddenly important 'useless knowledge'.

“I'm a TV show!” moaned the Doctor. “Oh, the troubles this could cause! How did it even happen?” He glared at the pictures he was calling up on the screen: “And look at the actors they chose!” The only thing that poor sod had in common with him was the ears... And, really! His fourth incarnation wouldn't have been caught dead in such a scarf – except for that one time he lost a bet to Sarah Jane and she took a picture... “Like the music, though,” he muttered as an aside.

“I like the actors fine,” commented John, but as usual, he was ignored.

“How could I let it happen!?”

“You could be delusional,” said Sherlock out of the blue.

The Doctor glared at him with such ferocity that even Sherlock looked spooked, which was unheard of. He recovered quickly, however: “It is a possibility. You believe yourself the protagonist of a show you know very well. Psychologically plausible.”

The Doctor smiled nastily: “Except that I'm the real deal--”

“You're keeping your story straight with excellent skill, I can give you that...”

“Oi!” yelled the Doctor. “Watch what you're implying there!”

With the precise, low baritone that was so characteristically _him_ , Sherlock summed up: “You're claiming to be an eccentric time-travelling humanoid alien of unspecified species, who explores the universe in a sentient time-travelling space ship and battles injustice wherever he finds it.”

“Are you quoting from Wikipedia?” asked John incredulously. “And – he's a Time Lord, just so you know.”

Sherlock shot him a quick glare.

“Yup. Last of the Time Lords, me,” agreed the Doctor, voice gone dark and low.

“Time travel? Sentient ships?” burst out Sherlock, upset. “This is so completely illogical that words to define it fail me!”

The Tardis sparked indignantly at him from the console and he hastily stepped away, glaring incredulously and almost colliding with John.

“And I’m not _humanoid_ ,” grumbled the Doctor, obviously disgruntled. “If anything, _you’re_ gallyfreianoid!”

“Oh, never mind all that!” John finally exploded. He turned to the Doctor: “What I truly want to know is: do you really have a sonic screwdriver?”

Sherlock's incredulous glare swung to him.

The Doctor gave him a flat look, then relented: “Yup. Here, look,” he flashed it out of a pocket and threw it and caught it deftly before handing it over with an unnerving smile.

John's eyes went wide with delight as he grasped it and examined it closely: “I want one!” he exclaimed enviously.

“Got a lot of cabinets to put up?” asked the Doctor, amused.

“You don't know the half of it,” replied John, heartfelt. He thought it over briefly: “Thing is, Sherlock's experiments tend to have explosive aftermaths...”

“John!” his friend exclaimed indignantly.

“...and guess who's the one who ends up doing all the cleaning up and fixing stuff part? And there's also all the times we get kidnapped or arrested or tied up somewhere or... yeah, well, let's just say I could really use some sonicking in my life.”

The Doctor flashed him a very amused grin but a moment later he was utterly serious, eyes gone dark with vexation: “What I cannot understand is how this TV show even came into being. It's... impossibly accurate. Even if they get half the things wrong,” he added quickly.

Sherlock regarded him steadily: “Isn't it obvious?”

“Excuse me?”

“You typically pick up various human at different points in history in order to have some company during your travels, correct? Then after a while you dump them again?”

“I leave them to live their own lives in peace!” retorted the Doctor, annoyed.

Sherlock waved the objection away: “Clearly, one such companions has used your situation and personal history to make money by transforming it in a TV show.”

“Seems like the most likely explanation,” said the Doctor with an unhappy grimace. “Knew I should just stick to travelling solo.”

He scanned more and more pages about the _Doctor Who_ series, scrolling them much faster than John could possibly hope to follow, and his expression became more and more grim.

“This is bad,” he said darkly. “Oh, this is very, very bad.”

“Well, in any case you'll have to deal with this at a later date,” John said decisively.

Both Sherlock and the Doctor turned to look at him in surprise and even the Tardis emitted a questioning little chirrup.

John raised his chin defiantly: “You were here for a reason before I told you about this and I'll bet it's more urgent than a TV show that's gone on for nearly 50 years!”

The Doctor blinked, abruptly reminded of the metal chunk he'd examined a little earlier. “You might have a point,” he admitted ungraciously.

Sherlock's eyes lit up with interest: “So what is it?” he asked eagerly. John smiled widely. Give his friend a mystery...

“None of your business,” retorted the Doctor, striding towards the door. He flung the door open: “Now, if you don't mind, I'd appreciate you going. Can't leave the Tardis open for anyone to stumble in, even if she's disguised.”

Sherlock snorted: “Disguised? Don't make me laugh.”

“It is disguised!” argued the Doctor. “Its outer plasmic shell is designed to assume a shape which blends in with its surroundings, based on an instantaneous scan of the landing environment!”

Sherlock looked at him disapprovingly: “It looks like an outdated police phone box.”

“Well, yeah, it got stuck like that some time ago, but I kind of like it,” the Doctor replied nonchalantly.

“Not much of a chameleon circuit if it isn't working, though, is it?”

Another vicious spark of electricity was spat out perilously close to Sherlock's hand.

“Oi! Don't go insulting my Tardis,” frowned the Doctor. “Anyway, I _like_ it!”

“Doesn't the fact that the 'disguise' is so noticeable defy its purpose?” insisted Sherlock, keeping a wary eye on the strange ship, but not relenting.

“It doesn't get noticed,” retorted the Doctor smugly.

Sherlock raised an eyebrow.

“Look, let me tell you somethin' 'bout the human race. You put a mysterious blue box slap-bang in the middle of town, what do they do? Walk past it. You stupid apes never bother questionin' anything.”

“...Can't argue with that.”

The Doctor froze: “Really?”

“Most people are idiots.”

“Knew you'd find something to bond over sooner or later,” commented John sarcastically. “Right! So now we can go on to... what is it that we're doing anyway?”

“There is no we,” exclaimed the Doctor, exasperated. “I'm just checking on a few things. I don't need any _help._ ”

“Oh, yes you do,” countered John. “You wouldn't be here if there wasn't something afoot. You only ever show up when aliens are about to invade us or something equally tragic.”

“Have you considered the possibility that this show of yours might be lying?”

“So you're here for a nice relaxing holiday?” asked John, raising an eyebrow. 

Silence reigned.

“Didn't think so,” John said smugly.

“Alright, I might have picked up some weird activity around Hounslow...”

“Exactly, which means you need us,” said John firmly. “Well,” he amended, “you need Sherlock. He's amazing, he'll have it all sorted out in no time. I... usually just go along for the ride. Er. And then blog about it.”

“You do much more than that, John. You're a conductor of light!” interjected Sherlock reprovingly.

The Doctor froze: “Sherlock.”

“Yeah.”

“And John.”

“That's... me...” said John cautiously.

“Sherlock _Holmes_?”

“Have you heard of me?...” asked Sherlock, surprised.

There was an unexpected explosion of enthusiasm: “Oh my God, you're Doctor Watson!”

John was bewildered: “Yeah, I am...”

“I love your writings! I've read them all. Honestly, I'm quite the fan!” exclaimed the Doctor happily, coming around to grasp John's hand and shake it vigorously. “Never expected to find you now, though.”

Sherlock groaned and hit his head repeatedly on the nearest strut.

John's eyes were wide and he whooped: “ _The Doctor_ reads my blog!”

“Can we focus on what truly matters?” whined Sherlock. “Tell me what's going on!”

The Doctor scowled at him: “If I knew what was going on, I wouldn't need to investigate. Now stop your nagging, will ya?”

Sherlock glowered right back, but John grabbed his elbow. Painfully. This was something he was better suited to than his 'manners-are-a-waste-of-time' friend.

The consulting detective didn't look happy, but subsided.

“What started it all?” John asked with all the eager interest he usually reserved for Sherlock's cases (working on the basis that genius loves an audience, even if it's alien).

It worked wonders: the Doctor looked at him with eyes that were suddenly wide and excited: “This! I picked up this signal emanating from an entire London district. It's artron energy! Well, a form of it. But the interesting thing is that it's _concentrated!”_

“Artron energy?” asked Sherlock, eyes narrowed in interest: “What is it?”

The Doctor pushed a couple buttons and whirled around, firing off rapidly: “Even at this point of your history you should be aware of what potential energy is – energy stored in a system of forcefully interacting physical entities. Now, the force field acting on a body that moves from a start to an end position can be defined by this potential energy if its work does not depend on the trajectory of the body, which means that potential energy can in turn be defined as the work done against a given force in changing the position of an object with respect to a reference position.”

“The position of infinite separation,” nodded Sherlock, easily following along.

John grimaced, feeling like a teenager trapped in a physics classroom again.

“If you sum the potential energy and the kinetic energy of an object, what do you obtain?” asked the Doctor in a leading way.

“Mechanical energy,” was Sherlock's prompt reply: “the total energy associated with the motion and position of an object.”

“But what happens if the start and end position aren't positions in the 3D space you're already familiar with, but rather in a higher dimensional space?” The Doctor regarded them for a long moment and then, grinning, exclaimed: “Exactly the same thing! Only instead of discussing mechanical energy, we're discussing artron energy. The energy associated with the motion and position of an object _actively_ travelling through time!”

“Fascinating,” breathed Sherlock, mind alight with the possibilities implied in the explanation he'd just received.

John carefully avoided voicing his comments about bloody geniuses and the annoyance level they caused and tried his best to apply his Sherlock-to-average-human translation skills to this new challenge. He really wished he could remember a little more physics from his uni days.

“So, if I get this straight,” he said aloud, looking dubious, “you only find this energy where someone travels in time?”

“Sort of.” The Doctor moved to the other side of the control and fiddled with a couple levers, all the while talking: “Thing is, everything is moving through time, everything, everywhere, all the time, there are no points outside of time, everything is affected. So everything generates artron energy all the time.”

“But for the objects that move according to the flow of time without actively contrasting it in any way, this energy would be standard. Unobtrusive. Insignificant,” said Sherlock, continuing the explanation smoothly, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “Nothing much, nothing noticeable, just one more thing increasing the entropy of our universe. Part of the cosmic background radiation.”

“Exactly!” said the Doctor, looking pleasantly impressed. “All lifeforms on every planet, including Earth, are exposed to it, it's ubiquitous; but also very uniformly and broadly spread. You wouldn't notice it in everyday life, the same way you don't notice the movements within the deeps of the sea while you're watching the waves. There aren't even any means to detect it on Earth, not for another three centuries at least.”

“And you detected an anomaly in its distribution patterns?” asked Sherlock, mind whirring.

“Right again,” replied the Doctor. “Very slight – barely two atto-Omegas – perfectly typical for Earth at this point in time but! Instead of being dispersed as background radiation, it's concentrated. It's like there are actual beams of it, being purposefully directed. Granted, all electromagnetical, gravitational and temporal waves can be polarized, but natural sources of them are always incoherent, they consist of a random mixture of waves having different spatial characteristics, wavelengths, phases...”

“While this is polarized,” concluded Sherlock, “therefore it's not a natural phenomenon. It's... the temporal equivalent of a laser.”

“Couldn't have put it better myself.”

“What could cause this?” asked John, trying not to show that he'd given up on the explanation. Really, medicine was one thing. Temporal physics? Better leave that to Sherlock.

“I think, John, that the better question is 'who',” said Sherlock, piercing the Doctor with his penetrating gaze.

Serious, the Time Lord nodded, crossing his arms before his chest: “Quite so. Some species are more sensitive to it than others. Panjistri, Groske,… but many more are aware of it and capable of exploiting it. Normally it is used as a source of energy, but here...” he trailed off.

“A source of energy?” asked John, uncomprehending.

“The same way mechanical energy can be used to produce, say, electrical energy, I imagine,” was Sherlock's cursory clarification.

The Doctor mmm-ed his agreement. “Problem is, I scanned the surroundings in search of an energy factory of some sort, but while there are some odd spikes in a couple places, none of the readings could possibly match something like that.”

“I thought you didn't do scans for alien tech?” commented John in a joking tone.

The Doctor gave him an eye-roll: “I really need to have a _long_ chat with whoever created that show.”

“It's a valid question, though,” pointed out Sherlock. “Do you often scan London for alien signals? For that matter, what are you even doing in my city?”

“ _Your_ city?” repeated the Doctor incredulously, but he went on immediately: “Oh, never mind that. I don't have time to quarrel with you apes.”

Sherlock drew in his breath, outraged, but the Doctor paid him no mind: “For your information, I normally wouldn't bother, especially since it doesn't look dangerous. But I was bored.”

“Oh, God, not another one!” moaned John.

Sherlock's incensed gaze swung to him.

“Which reminds me! I need to pick up a friend.” The Doctor turned around and reached for a lever on one of the facets surrounding the central column

A sort of wheezing, groaning noise started up and John felt excitement rise up in him.

“What's that?” demanded Sherlock, half-alarmed and half-intrigued.

“We're moving!” exclaimed John in delight.

“Not much, just over to Powell Estate,” corrected the Doctor absently.

“Rose?” guessed John.

The Doctor grimaced: “Remind me to have a chat with _you_ as well, about spoilers and reapers and whatnot, alright? Sooner the better. But yes, Rose. She's visiting with her mother.” Another grimace. “Scary woman, that Jackie. She slapped me once.” He looked still flabbergasted by it. Then he shrugged: “Made myself scarce as soon as they mentioned shopping.”

“Wise man,” commented John, delightfully amused.

“Soul of wisdom, me,” grinned the Doctor.

“Are you sure it's a smart idea to have her coming?” was Sherlock's acidic comment. He worked best alone – well, apart from John, of course – and wasn't best pleased with having to share this fascinating investigation with yet another someone.

“Trust me, you do not want to face her wrath if we leave her out of this,” replied the Doctor, neatly swiping John's mobile phone right out of his pocket.

“Ehi!” protested the blogger, but without much heat. It's not like Sherlock didn't do the same every other day, after all.

“Rose? Something's come up,” the Doctor said into the phone. “Be ready to go in five minutes.” He looked up at Sherlock and John and his face split in a wild grin: “The game's afoot!” he cried.

He snapped the phone shut and twirled around the console shouting: “Always wanted to say that. Oh, it's fantastic!”

Sherlock glowered at John, telegraphing loud and clear _this is your fault._ John ran a hair on the back of his head sheepishly.

A moment later the odd pulsating noise that hadn't really stopped so much as reversed its crescendo into a 'downward' series of wheezes stopped and the Doctor made for the door in his long, rangy stride, wrenching it open right on time to receive an enthusiastic flying hug from a pink and yellow blur, that resolved itself into a blonde girl wearing a pink hoodie.

Sherlock groaned in exasperation and started muttering to himself about sentiment and its uselessness.

“Ehi!” shouted Rose, extricating herself from the Doctor's arms and bouncing around a little. “Just who do you think you are anyway?!”

Somehow, she managed to glower and grin at the same time.

“Sorry,” John called her attention and gave her a warm smile. “I'm John, and that's my best friend Sherlock. He... doesn't do domestic,” he explained. His apologetic tone was utterly ruined by the undercurrent of laughter in his voice.

Rose snorted and shot a meaningful glance at the Doctor: “Yeah, I know the type.”

The Doctor beamed his alien smile: “A man after my own hearts! Right then. Let's go!”

“Hearts?” mouthed Sherlock, intrigued.

John just grinned.

And the wheezing noise of trumpeting elephants accompanied them once more as the Tardis dematerialized, reappearing a moment later at the corner of a quiet street in a largely residential area.

“So what are we... investigating?” asked Rose with a beaming smile that John returned with equal enthusiasm: “Apparently, we have no idea.”

“Oh, good. I like those best!”

“Me too,” Sherlock let slip, surprising even himself.

“Let's go out and see!” the Doctor grinned madly and flung open the door.

They stepped out onto a nondescript junction between large, well-kept roads without much traffic. Trees on the sides, neat rows of semi-detached houses with large back gardens, an unpretentious pub called Windsor Castle in a corner.

“Bath Road,” murmured Sherlock at once, turning around on himself. “Wellington Road North, Sutton Lane. We're in Hounslow West.”

John looked up and recognized the elegant spire of St Paul’s Church rising above the other buildings, a familiar visual landmark in this area of London.

"About four hours later," added the Doctor in an identical, absent tone.

John grinned widely at Sherlock's startled look.

They strode out more or less in a group, walking unhurriedly along Bath Road, taking in the sight of charming houses with bay windows, projecting porches and gable ends on one side of the road, and Victorian terraces with their ground floor shops and businesses on the other.

Red bricks and cream coloured render treatment walls dotted the series of cul-de-sacs branching off from the main road, where few people walked leisurely in front of large detached homes with leafy back gardens and setbacks deep enough to park a car.

“Anyone see anything strange?” asked Rose hopefully.

John stopped short and answered in a flat tone: “Yes.”

Everybody swung their heads around, instantly focused by his response.

Two young sisters with pigtails and anklet socks in buckled shoes ran across the street, schoolbags dragged after them: both wore vivacious flared skirts with straps that went over the shoulders, covering white blouses. They looked as if they'd stepped right out of a Fifties postcard.

The younger stumbled a little and the elder turned to grab her hand, clearly yelling something: only, no sound was heard from them. As if they were watching them in a TV on the mute setting. They smiled at each other and ran off, disappearing into thin air, without any fanfare, a few meters further.

“Are they... ghosts?” whispered Rose, uncertainly.

“They aren't the only ones,” pointed out Sherlock, whose eyes were jumping from place to place, seeking out the more and more numerous silent presences.

Here, two teenagers with bouffant hair and miniskirts were playing impromptu tennis, happily calling out to each other without emitting a single sound; there, a nanny in a modest black dress and pristine white apron pushed a wooden perambulator with huge, thin wheels; a little further away, two muddy boys with closely cropped hair and half-unfastened breeches laughed silently at each other, pelting an incongruously placed fence with mud and pebbles.

The Doctor's screwdriver was out and buzzing madly, but he didn't seem to be getting any substantial answers.

“Let's check how far it spreads,” he ordered brusquely.

They ran up and down the neighbourhood. Noticing the lively patrons in all sorts of fashions, side by side without surprise, going in and out of historic pubs that were, in actuality, shut and boarded up. Taking in the way a supermarket next door to the Hussar Pub flickered and wavered, like static on a screen, and then was suddenly replaced by a chemist's, except that the woman in jeans and blouse coming out of it held plastic bags full of contemporary items and looked perplexed. Observing a man in loose fitting trousers that reached mid-calf and a ragged, whitish shirt belted with a cord as he came out to silently greet a rider sporting a luxurious, groomed beard and an elaborate cloak, arrived from nowhere and now dismounting from his horse.

Many people were noticing now, stopping and pointing, whipping out smartphones and cameras, wondering aloud whether this was an odd dream, a trick, a historical fair, a miracle, a tourist trap, the filming of a new movie, a publicity stunt...

There was a queue going all the way round the corner in front of an Odeon that didn't exist in contemporary London, whose posters promised the projection of 'A Hard Day’s Night'; a really nice china shop overlapping a much more modern sports shop; a silently wheezing man huffing and puffing without sound as he busied himself around a luxurious Ford Consul, half-visible in 'Stanley Motors', while two elderly ladies discussed ferociously the possibilities of his really being poor, dear Sally's Frank, who'd died of a heart-stroke forty years prior and left her alone with that good-for-nothing son of hers.

The little episodes were multiplying, springing up all over the place, some lasting barely a few seconds, others as much as ten minutes.

Here and there, in corners and alleys or in the middle of the street, children from different eras were playing with rags balls or speeding around on their go-karts, without a care for the cars stopping and honking at them. It was as if they didn't even see the vehicles forced to swerve abruptly to avoid them; and just like their yells and laughter didn't reach the watchers, the shouts coming out of the cars didn't catch their attention in the least. A rag-tag band of urchins, blissfully unaware of the drivers and passengers that stopped right in the middle of the road and got out to gape at them, faded into nothingness before the shocked watchers' eyes.

The four came to a halt in Montague Road and stared at the Hounslow Police Station, amazed at what they saw.

A small group of teenagers with earplugs dangling from their shoulders held up their smartphones, in an eerily similar mimicry of how a few medieval monks held up the wooden crosses linked to their rosary beams, their undyed scapulars seamlessly continuing the line of graphic t-shirts.

Behind them, a building rose, in the form of a cross with a great tower at the intersection, eclipsing the squared, ugly brick walls of the police station; as they watched, it changed slowly but surely, gaining and then losing again a huge entrance, guest accommodations, kitchens in two different places, arches decorated with stiff-leaf moulding, market stalls against its walls... until it was devoured by silent flames that didn't warm the air.

“It's beautiful!” sighed Rose, a little sadly.

“But what is it?” breathed John, eyes wide with wonder.

“It's the Priory. Holy Trinity Priory,” said the Doctor quietly. “It has existed since the 13th century. Hounslow was centred around it, it's how it started: the Priory would offer accommodation to travellers and over the years, many inns sprung up around it for the same purpose... then other facilities for travellers heading to and from London, regular markets, a staging post...”

“Archaeological evidence of the Priory was found during excavations at Hounslow Police Station in 1995,” murmured Sherlock. “Proof that it was built and rebuilt several times, the last after a fire in World War II.”

The Priory rose once more in front of their eyes, starting the whole cycle again, like a video stuck on a loop.

They shared a glance and then, by unspoken agreement, continued slowly down the street, eyes wide, past a medieval butchers and a small cake shop full of schoolboys in uniforms from Edwardian times and an ice-cream man handing over a lolly with an ice cream on the top to a rosy-cheeked girl in a pleated skirt and low slung belt, both utterly ignored by the serious woman with a bob cut and boyish figure that was passing right by them.

Every now and then, the Doctor held his trusted screwdriver high in the air and turned it slowly around, analysing his surroundings.

Sherlock muttered half-formed observations and quickly changing connections in mid-voice, almost non-stop.

Rose gaped at the diverse little scenes on display; she barely suffocated her scream when she found herself unexpectedly on the path of an old lorry, but it passed through her like a ghost and went on delivering coal to houses that were no longer there without affecting her or anything else.

John, for his part, was tense, with the unpleasant feeling that he was missing something crucial; but he lost himself completely in admiration of a blonde young lady, small, dainty and dressed simply in a sombre, greyish beige Victorian dress, untrimmed and unbraided, and a small dull turban with a pretty white feather in the side.

Her large blue eyes raised to meet his for a long instant, with a sweet and amiable expression; yet she appeared distressed: her lip trembled, her hand quivered, and she showed every sign of intense inward agitation.

She wasn't a conventional beauty; but John felt that he had never seen anyone quite as lovely. For a moment, he wished with a stab of pure longing that they could meet.

Then she was gone, vanished as any other ghost.

The Doctor's voice startled him out of his reverie: “Just Hounslow West, then,” he commented, frowning a little at his sonic screwdriver.

“So it would seem,” agreed Sherlock.

“Any ideas on the hows and whys... or at least the whats?” asked John.

“Too soon,” was Sherlock's brief response.

No-one else spoke.

Barrack superstore was suddenly replaced under their eyes by a few men in shirts and suspenders trying to hang a sign that said simply 'Smith's' over an ironmongery; a woman in a light blue dress with a pristine white apron regarded them with a worried smile.

They, too, faded like nothing a little while later.

The four stood still, sharing occasional glances, each of them deep in thought.

Rose was the first among them to break their thoughtful silence: “Doctor! That man over there!...” she cried in shock. “That's Charles Dickens!”

He whirled around: “What? Where?! Uuh... you're right! It's Charlie! Looking younger than last time we met him, though. Wonder who's with him?”

Never one to be outdone, Sherlock interjected haughtily: “Probably his friend and solicitor, Thomas Mitton, who lived in Isleworth and Hounslow for over thirty years. Dickens paid frequent visits to him.”

John muttered something uncomplimentary about deleting the solar system but not Dickens' friends' biography, but the Doctor beamed: “Of course! They met when Charlie was eighteen and working as a solicitor’s clerk in Lincoln’s Inn, Thomas Mitton was a trainee solicitor there. Ah, this is fantastic!” He crossed his arms and watched happily.

Sherlock hesitated for only a heartbeat: “You really know Charles Dickens?” he blurted out.

“They met in Cardiff,” provided John, still a little grumpy.

“How do you know that?” asked Rose, surprised.

“Don't even ask,” ordered the Doctor, snippy, and he gave her such a dark look that she faltered. A moment later he grinned so suddenly the change in expression almost gave her whiplash: “Oi! I remember that place!”

He pointed to a little ‘house-window’ business just across the street from them: “I came here in 1840 – or was that 1841? Anyway, I met this bloke – John Appleton; he was a metalsmith and retail ironmonger, a very good one, too. Managed to forge a spare piece for my Tardis exactly to my specifications. That's impressive, considering he'd never even heard of solenoids. Didn't ask too many questions, either. Very nice man. And he's over there,” he pointed dryly.

They watched for a moment the thin but sturdy man with ginger sideburns coming out to dump a heavy basket to the side of the road, before returning inside and vanishing along with his shop.

Rose grabbed his arm and pointed the other way: “Who's that one?” she asked curiously.

She was watching a man with a hip-length cape slung elegantly over a shoulder and stiff breeches that were obviously fashionable for the XVII century: he was bowing courteously to a terrified looking woman in a richly embroidered but very uncomfortable looking bodice.

“Ah... well. Unless I'm very much mistaken, that is Claude Duval, one of the most romantic figures in the history of highwaymen. His gallantry endeared him to his female victims even while he was robbing them! They even put it on his tomb. _Here lies DuVall: Reder, if male thou art/ Look to thy purse; if female, to thy heart,_ ” he quoted.

Sherlock nodded his agreement: “Local tradition says that he once stopped a coach on Hounslow Heath and found a nobleman and his wife, who played a tune on her flageolet--”

“What's a flageolet?” asked John and Rose together. She scowled when they were ignored and he just grimaced in sympathy, all too used to Sherlock's rudeness.

The consulting detective went on casually: “Duval admired her playing and said he was sure she danced equally well. The lady then agreed to dance with him...”

“...and then he let them go without robbing them?” asked Rose, feeling romantic.

Sherlock looked at her strangely: “No, he demanded £400 as payment for the dance.”

Her face fell.

“I was at his execution,” said the Doctor thoughtfully. “Tyburn, 1670. Oh, just passing through,” he added hurriedly.

Eyebrows raised all around him: “Passing through?”

He grimaced: “Long story.”

Rose started to say: “Doctor...”

But he was moving once more, saying blithely: “Plenty of long stories around here. And short stories, too. It's an interesting borough. Full of history.”

“Oh, yes,” agreed Sherlock, far too nonchalantly. “In the 18th century an aristocrat disposed of his wife’s body in the Thames not far from here.”

The Doctor glared at him askance: “Not what I was thinking of,” he muttered. “Very peaceful place, this, in spite of all the travellers passing through. Quiet. There didn't use to be much at all, just worker cottages, a few farms... the coaching inn. It didn't really develop until the Metropolitan District Railway arrived.”

“Mmm.” Sherlock smirked. “One of the navvy murdered his brother in law during the construction works of the station, in 1838, by balancing some lumber unsteadily on a carefully arranged trowel, which he then connected, using wires, to the metal drainpipe of the scaffoldings, which he topped with a makeshift lightning rod, counting on the fact that their employers were slavedrivers who forced the men to work in any weather... Would probably have got away with it, too, if another man hadn't accidentally spotted him pushing his brother in law into the right position to be hit by the falling lumber. Always thought it was rather creative of him. Definitely before his times, too.”

The Doctor turned to glare at him outright: “Average crime rate,” he said defiantly. “Good place to grow up. A number of Olympic champions are from here, you know. Very sporty place, this.”

“Mo Farah,” volunteered John.

“Sarah Ayton,” promptly added Rose.

“And actors, singers... painters!” continued the Doctor. “Vincent Van Gogh taught scriptures in Isleworth!” He pointed dramatically to the east, in the direction of the mentioned nearby area.

“What, really?” asked Rose, shocked.

“Soldiers,” countered Sherlock. “There were the Barracks, here. The heath and its rivers provided waterpower and a safe place to manufacture gunpowder.”

“And what's wrong with soldiers?” asked John in a dangerous tone.

Sherlock faltered, and John relented: “I imagine the Hounslow Heath was the ideal place for large scale training exercises, especially for cavalry. Plus, it's strategically important, what with being in between London, Windsor and Hampton Court.”

“Yeah... It was also used as an encampment again and again,” admitted the Doctor. “Oliver Cromwell marshalled his troops here at the end of the English Civil War. I never met Cromwell. We should go say hello, sometime,” he told Rose.

“Or you could take me to a beach,” muttered Rose, but without much heat.

The Doctor crossed his arms, a faraway look in his eyes: “To think that now, all that remains of four thousand acres of wilderness, brimming with wildlife and haunted by notorious highwaymen...”

“Is two hundred acres of nature reserve, with everything that goes with it – namely, a golf course,” concluded Sherlock.

They all smirked at each other and fell silent once more.

The number of odd scenes from the past was dwindling now; the fewer and fewer remaining were fading fast, in just as unexplainable a way as they'd started.

The people who'd been entranced by the strange spectacle shook themselves out and went about their businesses once more, excitedly chatting about the unexpected happenings and speculating on the whys and wherefores.

“Show's over. Whatever it is, it's stopping.” The Doctor had his sonic screwdriver in hand again, studying the readings of the disappearing phenomenon.

When the last 'ghost' in sight vanished quietly, John asked in a tightly controlled tone: “Alright. Just what is going on?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have only a vague idea of what artron energy is supposed to be, and the canon explanations tend to be frustratingly contradictory, so I’m making up my own interpretation, cobbling together some stuff I learned in physics class once upon a time.


	4. Aliens from the future,

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock dropped to his knees under the nearest stool, magnifying glass in hand, and carefully scraped off the floor crumbles of reddish-brown crunchy stuff that vaguely reminded John of crisps.  
> “Interesting. I will have to examine this more closely to determine if their biology is any close to ours. If this is edible for humans as well, then...”  
> “Hold on, hold on – edible? Sherlock... are you saying that stuff actually is... alien crisps?”

When the last 'ghost' in sight vanished quietly, John asked in a tightly controlled tone: “Alright. Just what is going on?”

“Holograms,” stated Sherlock, with bed-rock surety.

“Not... quite...” The Doctor frowned at his sonic screwdriver some more, then whipped his head around to grin at them: “They're not real holograms, they just look and behave exactly like one.”

“...Right,” said Rose, deadpan.

The Doctor slanted a look at her: “Instead of sending a beam of high-intensity light through thousands of shifting pixels, whoever's doing this is using polarized artron energy tuned to specific resonating frequencies to elicit the residual psychic memories of the background temporal radiation .”

“Any chance to have that in English?” asked John without much hope.

“It's like an LCD projector, John,” said Sherlock, eyes alight with intensity. “Only they're using more than just the visible spectrum.”

John turned to him and raised an eyebrow, secretly awed that his mad-genius best friend was managing to understand  _T_ _he Doctor_ so easily.

“The goal is, in both cases, to project a picture in the air in 3D,” Sherlock went on. “Do you know how an LCD projector does that?”

John shook his head, eyes riveted on his friend.

Sherlock spoke quietly, an anticipatory air about him: “Step one: a beam of intense, white light is emitted. Step two: the beam of light bounces off a group of dichroic mirrors, reflecting only specified wavelengths. Step three: the beams of separated red, green and blue light each pass through a liquid crystal display composed of thousands of tiny colourless pixels that allow light to pass through when triggered by an electric current. Step four: inside the LCD projector, the three tinted versions of the scene recombine in a finely crafted combination of four triangular prisms to form a single image composed of millions of colours. And _voilà!_ A vibrant, colourful version of the scene can be projected through a lens and onto a screen.”

“Dich... what- mirrors?” asked Rose, sounding confused.

It was the Doctor who answered: “You know how a prism breaks a beam of light into a rainbow of colours?”

She nodded confidently.

“Dichroic mirrors only break off a single specified wavelength: the white light hits the mirrors and each reflects a beam of coloured light on through the projector, red, green and blue. The same principle can be applied to timewaves, by the way.”

“Knew it!” muttered Sherlock, exultant. “Only, it isn't about splitting the colours, is it? And the reflected beams don't pass through a liquid crystal display...”

“No,” agreed the Doctor. “Whatever they're using, it splits the unpolarized timewaves into rays with different resonating frequencies and then uses the mnemonic imprints of the temporal field's variations lingering in the visible surfaces to convert the timewaves into lightwaves, generating visual impressions of the past.”

“Urgh, my head's hurting,” complained John.

“Don't try and understand, just be ready to run,” advised Rose sagely. “Makes your life easier. And longer.”

The Doctor turned to her impatiently: “Structures can hold memories. That's why houses have ghosts. This is pulling those memories up and showing them. It's... some sort of time viewer. A chronoscope, so to say.”

“Oh!” said John, suddenly understanding. “Like in Asimov, then? I get it. We're seeing the past reflected from surfaces.”

“You and your sci-fi,” muttered Sherlock, not as grouchy as he'd like them to believe.

“Is that even possible?” asked Rose in disbelief.

“Whether it's possible or not, it's happening,” murmured the Doctor.

“Why only the past, though?” wondered Sherlock in a louder voice.

“Because it is exactly like an LCD projector,” replied the Doctor. “In the version your people have invented, all three of the pixels screens in the projector display the same image in grey-scale and when the coloured light passes through these three screens, they relay three versions of the same scene: one tinted red, one tinted green and one tinted blue. It's the meshing of the three that gives you the right colours in the final projection.”

“But if one of the dichroic mirrors is broken, we get a final image heavily tinted instead of a normally-coloured one,” continued Sherlock in a tone of sudden understanding. “And that's exactly what's happening here, isn't it? The imprints of the past and the tangible surfaces of the present act as screens for this huge projector, but only the rays from a certain set of frequencies are passing through it. We get the past version of the scene overlapping the present version provided by the natural passing of time and that's it. The mirror for the future is broken.”

“Might not be broken, might just not be a feature, but... yeah, excellent explanation. Well done, you!” the Doctor exclaimed, impressed. “Also, there is only recent past.”

“Recent?” asked Rose sarcastically. “I saw a butcher straight from the Dark Ages!”

“Exactly. Eight, nine centuries at the most. The history of Britannia is a lot longer than that – how come we see no Romans, for instance? What about the ice age? Clever apes making good use of stone and fire? _Pelorosaurus_ munching on long lost trees? Earth has existed for four and a half billion years.” He smiled smugly at her: “Eight centuries is recent.” Suddenly, he frowned: “Of course, it's also impressively powerful.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Sherlock, frowning.

“Because timewaves aren't only waves,” said the Doctor succinctly.

“They're also particles, like light,” said promptly John – at least he knew _something_ , even if it was just a refrain he didn't really understand.

Sherlock, of course, had no such problems: “And therefore there is an inevitable amount of blurring,” he concluded at once. He thought for a moment, then added: “It's probably why the most recent past produces longer spells of images.”

“Oh! That's brilliant, that,” said the Doctor, approvingly. “I hadn't noticed. Yes, yes... considering the relative length of the scenes we've witnessed... I'd say, an inverse sixth power of the distance from the source as the decay rate of resolution – the farther away from the temporal point of image materialization, the less sustainable the process...”

He trailed off, fiddling with the settings of his sonic screwdriver and moving quickly and randomly up and down the closest side street, ignoring the three humans chasing after him and their insistent questions. Well, two humans' questions. Sherlock was busy checking his calculations with his own.

Suddenly, the Doctor stopped, the sonic screwdriver's point glaring with blue light. He observed it closely, then cursed.

“Found anything?” asked Rose, a little anxiously.

The Doctor shook his head with a frown: “I scanned for life forms in the area, filtering out the expected DNA sequences – human, of course, but also feline and canine, as well as all the common terrestrial insects, birds and scavengers. Nothing. It turns up nothing that is not supposed to be here.”

“So whatever's doing this is not alive?” John.

“Or it's not there. It could be remotely controlled,” Sherlock pointed out.

“Quite so,” said the Doctor.

“But to what purpose?” asked Rose.

“I don't know yet, but this is bad. This is very, very bad,” said the Doctor, looking grave. “Whatever it is, it's affecting the natural temporal decay of all living creatures in the artificial artron field,” murmured the Doctor, focusing intensely on his screwdriver.

“What do you mean?” asked John, not quite understanding. “It's just waves, right? I mean, aside for the psychological implications of viewing the past, it's harmless... isn't it?”

The Doctor didn't answer, but Sherlock murmured: “Radiation.”

“What!?” blurted out John. He paled as his medical mind easily called up the long, long list of symptoms and consequences of exposure to harmful radiations – nausea, vomiting, headache, loss of white blood cells, hair loss, damage to nerve cells and digestive tract lining cells, immunodeficiencies, haemorrhaging, fever, diarrhoea, long-term high risk of leukaemia, lung cancer, thyroid cancer, breast cancer...

“Alright, that's enough, thank you very much!” squeaked Rose, looking even paler than him.

John grimaced and apologized: he hadn't realized he'd been talking aloud.

“Doctor, do you believe we're about to face an onslaught of radiation sickness cases?” asked Sherlock with equanimity.

He didn't seem remotely scared by the possibility. Intrigued, if anything.

John, on the other hand, was just this side of terrified and already going over a list of the few treatments available – blood transfusions could be organized, possibly, no, certainly, if Mycroft helped; bone-marrow transplants were probably out of the question...

The Doctor left the street abruptly and jumped over a low fence, making a beeline for the bow-window in a house nearby: through the squares of glass, a canary in a cage could be seen, singing feebly.

“You cannot see it with humans, the changes, even accelerated, are too slight for you to perceive,” the Doctor said, while running his sonic screwdriver over the fixed hinges of the window to open it and reach inside, getting the canary out of its cage and holding it delicately in his hand. “But with creatures that are more short-lived...”

The canary was ageing, by imperceptible degrees, under their very eyes. Its panting breaths, showing its upset at being caught, were wheezing; its breastbone seemed more and more prominent as it appeared to lose weight as they watched; its eyes grew foggy; the fluttering of its wing against the Doctor's hands weaker and weaker.

“What were the places?” asked Sherlock out of the blue.

They turned to him, uncomprehending.

“What places?” asked the Doctor.

“Earlier, you said you had detected 'odd spikes', not consistent with an energy factory but strange nonetheless, in 'a couple of places'. What places?” he demanded impatiently.

“The Holy Trinity Church we passed earlier and Treaty Centre on High Street,” replied the Doctor, frowning. “But neither place shows any peculiarity anymore.”

“We'll split up, then. You two go check out the church, we'll take the library. John, let's go!” He strode off without waiting for acknowledgement.

“Hold on a minute!” shouted the Doctor after him. He grimaced when Sherlock simply kept walking briskly.

John sighed and gave the Doctor and Rose an apologetic look: “We'll be back as soon as possible,” he assured them, and hurried after the consulting detective.

The Doctor cursed, then gently returned the dying canary to its cage and closed the window, casting a dark gaze at Rose.

She smiled tentatively at him and he couldn't help grinning back as he grasped her hand tight and dragged her off.

Not ten minutes later, Sherlock and John were marching up to the Library on the first floor of the Treaty Shopping Centre, because Sherlock had taken one look around the ground floor and somehow deduced that whatever they were looking for, was going on in the basement.

Why, that being the case, they were running _up_ some stairs instead of down, was a little beyond John, but he was too used to Sherlock's unorthodox methods to worry too much.

The library was spread out over the floor and beautifully luminous even so close to sunset, but with an overall shabby appearance, probably due to the poorly kept carpeting. However, John barely got a glimpse of the spacious area, before he zeroed in on Sherlock, who was flashing a suspiciously familiar leather-bound paper at a stern-looking, copper-haired employee, declaring himself a Health and Safety Inspector and proceeding to half-charm, half-bully her into taking them to the storage rooms in the basement.

As she moved through shelves and tables, showing them the way to the staff-only stairs, he caught up with his friend and grabbed his arm: “Hold on,” he whispered in urgent disbelief. “That's the Doctor's psychic paper!”

Sherlock glanced at him in irritation: “That's a stupid name.”

“So not the point,” hissed John.

He was, not altogether surprisingly, ignored; but that seldom stopped him these days. “Sherlock! You stole the Doctor's psychic paper!”

“Why are you so upset?” retorted Sherlock, sounding frustrated. “You're never this upset when I lift Lestrade's badge. ”

John opened his mouth to retort, realized abruptly that his friend was right, and closed it.

Another employee, this time a fatty man with a disgruntled expression, was coming up with a cardboard box in his arms.

“Oh, Dave, good, you can handle these gentlemen,” said their guide with relief, stopping on a step; she ignored the man's indignant grumblings and patted John's arm as she passed them on her way back up: “I'm sure you don't need me anymore, do you?” She didn't wait for an answer.

“Now see here!” shouted the fatty man, shifting the box to a side and looking even more disgruntled.

Sherlock breezed past him arrogantly: “Safety at Work,” he threw over a shoulder, waving the psychic paper again. “Checking out things, might have some questions later, don't wander off,” he rattled off authoritatively, without glancing at him, nor breaking his stride.

The poor man just nodded dumbly and pressed himself against the wall to let John pass, dissatisfied but too bewildered to protest.

“You're going to use and abuse that like there's no tomorrow, aren't you?” muttered John, resigned.

Sherlock smirked, and John scowled: “First chance we get, you'll give that back!” he said in a tone that brooked no argument.

“I was planning to do a few tests...”

“Absolutely not!”

Sherlock pouted.

The examination of the storage rooms didn't take anywhere near as long as John expected, though it probably would have if Sherlock wasn't so incredibly observant. John would certainly never have noticed that the out of order elevator on the side... couldn't be a elevator.

“Honestly, John,” huffed Sherlock. “It's in an absurd place for an elevator – the structural integrity of the whole building would be compromised if it was really there. Not to mention that on the floors above this, the elevators are in an entirely different place. Obviously, it's some sort of disguise. Really, don't you ever observe?”

Sure enough, what to the eyes were elevator doors, to the touch were instead a simple metal door, identical to all the others in the basement; and beyond that, they found a rather ordinary room with shelves and boxes haphazardly pushed to the corners to make room for a big, oval table and a number of oval stools around it.

Sherlock dropped to his knees under the nearest stool, magnifying glass in hand, and carefully scraped off the floor crumbles of reddish-brown crunchy stuff that vaguely reminded John of crisps.

For his part, the blogger approached the table and cautiously picked up a flexible sheet of soft, slightly sticky material, textured with embossed angular lines. “Looks like silicone scar sheets,” he muttered.

Sherlock examined it curiously: “Looks like a document of some sort,” he corrected. “See this pattern? It's repeated here, and here, but here has a different ending, which is in turn repeated several times, in association with other roots... I believe, John, that their grammar might not be so different from ours, in structure.”

John gaped: “What?”

“I will have to examine this more closely to determine if their biology is any close to ours, however. If this is edible for humans as well, then...”

“Hold on, hold on – edible? Sherlock, what are you on about?”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow condescendingly: “Surely you can see that this is a buyer-seller meeting room?”

“What? No, I can't see it!” exclaimed John, but even as he was saying it, he realized that, yeah, maybe, in fact, it could possibly, probably, very likely...

“I cannot, of course, be one hundred percent sure,” admitted Sherlock, looking dissatisfied. “Cultural differences and all that. I cannot account for it, so I might be wrong. Still! It makes sense.” He nodded briskly and whipped out his phone.

“Does it?” asked John, half-dazed.

He looked around again, taking in the arrangement of furniture, walking about to try and see what Sherlock was seeing; he found and collected two more silicone-like sheets covered with – well, yes, he supposed it did look like writing; and scooped up some orangey hairs from a couple of the stools.

“Wait,” he said suddenly. “Are you saying that that brown crunchy stuff is actually... alien crisps?”

For some reason, he found the idea hilarious - but thankfully he managed not to giggle. This was, after all, a crime scene. Of sorts.

“This is useless!” cried Sherlock suddenly. “There's quite a number of those orange hairs around – obviously that is a characteristic of the species. Yet even accounting for the possibility of different colouring in a pattern similar to human hair and skin, there isn't a species listed here that could fit. They have to be humanoids, given the kind of furniture they use and their probable proportions, but they also have claws – see the marks there and there? Then again, quite a number of aliens seem to have claws. That hardly narrows it down.”

John goggled at him: "What are you on about?"

“Whoever devised this show of yours did a very poor job in terms of xenobiology research!”

“Are you seriously complaining about a TV show being inaccurate in its representation of alien life forms?” asked John blankly.

Sherlock glared at his smartphone. “This database is completely useless, John. It doesn't even let me determine with any certainties if there was only one species involved.”

John massaged his forehead wearily: “What are you talking about?”

“It might be wrong to attempt to pin every clue on one species. What if there were more involved? Might there have been an inter-species meeting here? Impossible to tell one way or another. It could have, though. To what purpose? An alliance perhaps? Business dealings? What?!” He threw his hands in the air: “No info on the socio-political state of this galaxy anywhere, how am I supposed to draw conclusions without a reference context?” he ranted.

John gaped. “Hold on. Hold on! Socio-political state of this galaxy... Sherlock! How do you even know about how many species have claws?”

The genius raised his smartphone mockingly, showing John the home page of Tardis Data Core, the Doctor Who wiki. Obviously, he'd been browsing to get himself up to date.

"I don't believe it!" whispered John, stunned.

“This ridiculous database is even more unreliable than Cosmopolitan UK!” Sherlock complained vehemently.

There really was nothing John could say to that.

Somehow, they found themselves back in 221B Baker Street, Sherlock setting up a series of experiments on the possibly-alien-crisps, and the likely-alien-documents, and also on the psychic paper (though carefully out of John's sight), and John making tea and cursing his idiocy in forgetting to get the Doctor's or Rose's number. They'd swung by the Tardis and left a note pinned to the door before catching a cab, but a phone call would really have been much more practical.

“ _Mastocarpus stellatus,_ ” declared Sherlock after a while, “and quite a lot of polyunsaturated fat and linoleic acid – grape seed oil, if I'm not mistaken.”

John raised an eyebrow: “The alien crisps?”

“Alien crisps made of Irish moss rather than potatoes,” agreed Sherlock, while contemplating a little bit of the reddish-brown crumbs thoughtfully. Then, to John's horror, he threw it in his mouth, tasting it with concentration.

“What the hell are you doing!?” yelled John.

Sherlock rolled his eyes: “They're perfectly safe, John, I made sure of that.”

But finding himself speared with Doctor John Watson's strongest I'm-your-doctor-you'll-listen-to-me-or-you'll-regret-it glare, he wisely allowed his friend to fuss, checking his vitals and all the while grumbling about careless idiocy under his breath.

"What was even the point of tasting the stuff?!" he ranted at his best friend.

The bell ringing downstairs interrupted them, to Sherlock's secret relief, and Rose and the Doctor barged in, followed by a worried-looking Mrs. Hudson.

“Is everything alright, dears?” their landlady asked, eyeing the Doctor's manic grin distrustfully.

“Interesting case, Mrs. Hudson, nothing to worry about,” John hastened to reassure her and gently herded her back to the stairs.

“Oh, well, very good then. Have fun!” she called over her shoulder, going back down.

The Doctor's eyebrows raised in surprised admiration at her retreating form, then he turned around and proclaimed without preambles: “We've got them.”

“So what are they called?” Sherlock asked with too much nonchalance.

“What?” asked the Doctor, a bit surprised.

“The humanoid, orange-haired aliens with short legs and elongated torsos that left claw marks all over the furniture in the meeting room we found at the Treaty Center,” said Sherlock matter-of-factly. "They aren't on the TV show database."

"Thank goodness for small mercies," blurted out the Doctor with feeling.

"Wait. You saw them?" asked Rose, surprised.

"No."

"Then how do you know...?"

Sherlock raised an elegant eyebrow: "Given the relative proportion of the furniture there, the remnants of food items and body sheddings we collected, the height and placement of the scratches in the room and the impressions we noticed on the furniture, it's obvious, really."

Rose gaped: "You figured out what some random aliens look like just by looking at a room they were in?"

"Yes."

"That's brilliant!" she exclaimed with honest delight.

Sherlock stared at her, stunned. John chuckled.

“Well, this confirms it. I was uncertain, but the orange hairs narrow it down enough," said the Doctor with satisfaction. "Dirulinians!"

Everybody looked at him expectantly.

He crossed his leather-clad arms and explained: "Rather unscrupulous race. They'll sell you breath from your own lungs if you aren't careful."

Rose giggled.

"Of course, they don't have claws," he went on. "Their neighbours though, the Skiloners? _They_ do."

Sherlock scowled. "Always something," he muttered, disgruntled.

"Neighbours?" asked John.

"Same solar system, next-door planet. Like Earth and Mars," clarified the Doctor easily. "Only Skilon is a lot closer to their sun, which is why Skiloners are a mostly nocturnal race. They’re shorter and leaner - and more upright by far. Must have been a trade set-up between the two races. I told you, Dirulinians will sell anything..."

"Well, they're selling our past," said Rose grimly. She waved one of the not-scar-sheet-but-definitely-not-paper documents, showing them it was a flyer.

Sentences like _history brought alive_ , _price available upon request_ and _quaint corner of the universe_ jumped to John's eyes in flowing English script and once more he felt an irresistible - and rather inappropriate - urge to burst out laughing.

"You can understand that?" demanded Sherlock, his intense gaze boring into Rose.

"Well, yeah," she answered, surprised. "Can't you? You should, I mean... it's the Tardis, you know? Translates for you."

"What do you mean?" asked the consulting detective sharply, snatching the flyer from her hand and looking it over with increasing incredulity. "It's English!"

John, having a sudden bad feeling about this, hurriedly tried to say something, but the Doctor beat him to it, blithely explaining: "It's a gift of the TARDIS, a telepathic field that gets inside your brain — translates over five billion languages."

He grinned. Sherlock did not.

"Your ridiculous ship is inside my mind?" he yelped, appalled.

Three exclamations burst out of his current companions in unison: "Oy! Mind your tongue! My ship ain't ridiculous!", "Hey! Don't insult the Tardis!", "Sherlock! Manners!"

Sherlock looked even more appalled, but the Doctor didn't leave him time to protest further. "Anyway, we've found the place where they set up the mainframe chronoscope - pretty obvious hiding place, really..."

“An elevator in a church's basement, honestly!” grinned Rose, in mock disappointment.

“Also, I've found their ship,” added the Doctor merrily.

“What?” exclaimed John.

“Their ship,” the Doctor repeated blithely. “It's in geosynchronous orbit over London.”

“I thought you looked for it before. How did you miss that?” frowned Sherlock, still miffed. Part of him was trying and hastily checking his mind palace for foreign interference, but the conversation going on kept distracting him. “Come to think of it, how did our astronomers miss that?”

“Well, I didn't know they had chronoscopic technology then, did I?”

“What has that got to do with anything?”

“It makes the ship look like an asteroid because that's what it once was!” exclaimed the Doctor, beaming. “It's fantastic!”

"Cool," agreed John.

"So now, all we have to do is stop their operations, wreck the equipment to the point where it can't contaminate current human technology levels, fix the damage they've done with their modulated artron field and talk them out of trying this stunt again!" The Doctor beamed smugly at the room at large.

Sherlock looked at him incredulously: "Talk them out of…? You want to _talk_ to them?"

"Yup."

"And you truly think it'll be of any use?"

"Can't imagine why not."

Sherlock rolled his eyes. John saw Rose's amused gaze dance to his behind the two geniuses' backs and realized he wasn't the only one trying to stifle giggles that would inevitably be met with indignation.

Suddenly, the former army doctor was struck with an overwhelming feeling of absurdity.

There they were, his unbelievable best friend and a fictional pair of legends - and him - strategizing how to stop a bunch of greedy aliens who wanted to touristically exploit Earth's past... and all around them, their usual weird collection of untidy odds and ends, black bison skull with headphones and smiley on the wall and shapeless couch and all, which didn't really help to make the situation any more likely.

He met the empty gaze of the skull on their mantlepiece and felt almost a wave of vertigo.

The word 'unreal' danced through his mind. It was accompanied by the word 'fantastic', though.

Somehow, a map of Hounslow had appeared in the Doctor's hands from possibly nowhere and he was displaying it over their small table, carelessly pushing papers, trinkets and empty mugs aside to make room for it.

"What did you find at the Treaty Centre?" was asking the Doctor briskly.

John listened distantly.

"Nothing to be concerned about," was Sherlock's testy reply.

The Doctor glared. Sherlock glared right back: "Meeting room. Those flyers. Nothing of importance." He waved it away with a careless hand. "No reason for them to return there at this point, is there?"

"Probably not," the Doctor admitted grudgingly. "Still. It's uncanny. See?"

Sherlock and Rose bent closer to look at what he was pointing out.

"I think I'll make tea," said John, feeling the need for something familiar to soothe the unsettledness he was feeling.

Sherlock's head snapped up to stare at him: "Tea?" he asked incredulously.

"Yeah," he nodded slowly, warming to the idea. "Tea'll do me good."

"Awesome!" exclaimed the Doctor happily. "Love a good cuppa, me."

"Me too, please," said Rose with a warm smile.

John nodded dazedly and moved to the kitchen on autopilot.

Sherlock, who'd stopped his glaring at the Doctor in favour of staring at them all in disbelief, inquired very calmly: "Have you all gone mad?"

His voice floated to John in the kitchen, where his hands were flying through the very familiar movements of tea-making.

"Reckon we've been mad for years," Rose replied cheekily. Even without seeing her, John could tell she was smirking. "My mum certainly thinks so."

"Oi!" protested the Doctor without heat.

John grinned. Oh, well - if this was all a mad dream, at least he was having fun! And suddenly at peace with the collection of impossibilities in the next room, he went about doctoring everybody's tea cheerfully.

"This makes sense. Oh! This makes perfect sense!" the Doctor was exclaiming when he brought the mugs into the living room. "Look at where it all is."

A vivid pink highlighter was fished out of a pocket and he busied himself tracing crosses and borders on the map. Everybody leaned in to watch carefully.

"So the engine of the whole operation is in the church, and there's a PR centre in the local library, right?" he commented, tapping the back of the highlighter on the map lightly. "And this is the extent of the area influenced by the chronoscope. See what I mean, yet?"

"The 'PR centre' is perfectly central," Sherlock replied promptly.

"Looks like it," agreed Rose, while John nodded.

"Exactly. Perfect place for me to act."

"And do what, exactly?" asked Sherlock snidely. "Set up a parlay? Because it seems to me, that our main objective should be to stop the - what did you call it? 'The engine of the operation'. Not to waste time trying to contact--"

"That's not wasting time," the Doctor cut him off, "and I wasn't talking about negotiating with them anyway. Not yet at least - we've got to stop them first; pretty stupid to hope they'll just do it on their own."

"Then what are you talking about?" scowled the consulting detective.

"Reversing the deleterious effects of the residual temporal radiation, of course."

Sherlock started imperceptively.

"So... no more radiations sickness?" clarified John, whose stomach was still slightly churning at the idea. At the Doctor's nod, something inside him unclenched and he sighed in relief, taking a sip of his tea, which suddenly tasted better than ever.

"You claim you can just do this? Reverse the effects, fix it all?" asked Sherlock, without bothering to conceal his scepticism.

The Doctor regarded him seriously: "Not entirely, no. What has already happened has happened. Can't undo it. But!" His beaming smile returned with a vengeance: "I can stop it going any further and so far, it's been so light – months at the most, really - no human will notice any ill effects at all!"

Sherlock pursed his lips, unconvinced, but John brushed off any further objections: "Good enough, Doctor. How can we help?"

The Doctor turned his smile to him: "Figure you'd like to do what your partner wants to, and stop the mainframe chronoscope. How's that?"

John grinned back widely. Sherlock crossed his arms rather petulantly.

"So you and me, we go about fixing the radiation business, while the two of them go blow up that chronoscope thingie?" asked Rose, trying not to sound disappointed.

"Not blow up!" protested the Doctor. "Just... stop it. Was thinking more like cutting the power off... Should put a spanner in the works, that. Catch their attention, too. And that's all we need, really. Then we can talk them out of this nonsense."

"That's still a ridiculous idea. But let's say, for the sake of argument, that your plan will work. You want us to cut the power of an alien device off, something we have no idea how to do I might point out, correct? While you set up device in the Treaty Centre, to counter the residual artron radiation field, I assume?" asked Sherlock coldly.

"Yup!"

"It would be more logical for John and I to handle that part, since we have already run reconnaissance in the area, not to mention that it would probably be easier to handle a device you can explain to us beforehand."

"Well yeah. But then John wouldn't get to use... this!"

He spun abruptly, throwing something small at John, who caught it in mid-air without thought.

“What...?”

“I can't give you my sonic screwdriver, sorry,” the Doctor said matter-of-factly. John mock-pouted. “But!... I can let you use... that!” He gestured dramatically to the curved device that was blinking up orange lights at John. “It's a Marpesian anticatalyst shell. Sort of. I tweaked it a little bit, but that's not important. It's like a grenade, you do know how to use a grenade, I hope?”

John rolled his eyes: “Army doctor, here,” he reminded.

“Good. This is a grenade that will work as a temporal inhibitor. Considering what their technology is built on, the effect should be a complete black out.”

“Then why don't we just use that on their ship and be done with it?” asked Rose grimly. "The Tardis could take us there."

The Doctor shot her his sometimes-I-wonder-how-you-humans-managed-to-achieve-sentience-at-all look: "Because then they would be stuck here and we don't want that, do we?"

“Besides it would only be temporary,” added Sherlock impatiently. “Someone would be sent after them, or to investigate, or whatever. We need a more permanent solution to this problem.”

“Right. Of course. Knew that,” muttered Rose, fidgeting a little.

"So, everybody up to speed with the plan? Yes? Fantastic!" And just like that, the Doctor disappeared highlighter and map into his pockets and marched out of the room, Rose running after him with a startled squeak.

John hesitated a long instant, while Sherlock grumbled about irritating aliens and silly fangirls all the way through getting his coat and scarf on, but he finally made a beeline for his gun and loaded it with practiced ease.

He tried to ignore the feeling that he was being disloyal to the Doctor somehow, because it simply didn't make sense. "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst," he muttered philosophically. Anyway, he was a soldier. And there was nothing wrong with that, whatever the Doctor's opinion on weapons.

Sherlock was looking at him with peculiar intensity, trying to figure out his uncharacteristic behaviour, but John just gazed back at him levelly: "Ready?"

With an unconvinced sniff, Sherlock stalked out into the night.

They took a cab and were soon deposited in front of the Holy Trinity Church: a rather ugly, modern building with a tall tower of brown bricks and white concrete slabs, upon which two angular stone angels jerkily faced each other above a sign that looked very blue in the white light of the street lamps.

Making their way inside took a touch of burglary, but navigating the main sanctuary in the dark was easier than John had expected, the light of Sherlock's torch falling briefly on the stone altar, the rail behind which the choir stood, the painted nativity on the side, the gleaming organ pipes.

Finding the basement, which was littered with whirring machines and scattered cables John couldn't even begin to make heads or tails of, was the work of a minute and he didn't waste any time activating the temporal inhibitor either.

It was as they were making their way outside again that Sherlock went abruptly still. "John, I am such an idiot!" he hissed. "That... that... _alien_ , tricked me!"

"What are you on about now?"

"They're there! Don't you see?" spit the consulting detective, looking outraged and chagrined at once.

"No," was the blogger's concise answer.

Sherlock shook his head sharply: "I don't blame you, John. I didn't either! He said it, John. He said it! They're a nocturnal race! Oh, how could I have been so stupid?"

"Noct... oh! You mean-- oh, no. They're there, aren't they? They must be closing the deal even as we speak!"

"That's why he wanted to be the one there... why he was so interested in the 'PR centre', as he called it! He’s there confronting them and he tricked us into coming here to do the boring legwork instead! Argh!”

The consulting detective grabbed his own hair, furious at himself as much as at the Doctor. “Come on, John!” he shouted and took off at a run, his friend close on his heels.

Adrenaline was coursing through John's body when they raced up to the Treaty Centre and he couldn't have hidden his wide grin if his life had depended on it. God, but he loved this part of their lives.

The entrance doors had, very thoughtfully, been left ajar and by the looks of it, the security system was well and truly disabled: the way to the hidden room they'd explored that afternoon was clear and they barely slowed down as they darted through the hall and down the stairs.

They quickly located the door disguised as an elevator again. Oddly high-pitched, whiney voices drifted out of it and the two friends hurried there.

They were met with the sight of the Doctor looming forbiddingly over three tall but cowering forms. They were sort of humanoid, but with a pea-green tinge to their skin and, as Sherlock had deduced, had very elongated torsos and proportionally short legs. Their heads, shoulders and arms were covered in hairs, all different shades of orange, giving them a bit of a leonine appearance, aided by their very large, flat noses.

John didn't even try and stop himself from staring. It wasn't everyday you saw pale green lion-like humanoids in powder blue business suites, after all.

"We didn't do anything wrong!" one of them was wailing.

"You might as well own up. Your business partners have gone and fled, if you haven't noticed. They'll spread the rumour about me, too. Doubt you'll find someone else willing to strike a deal, now."

"What were you even thinking, coming here with this much alien technology?" That was Rose. "I might not know much, but I do know that's against the rules."

"But this is the perfect place for a demonstration!" burst out one of the aliens in a high-pitched whine. "Long enough history to make a show of it, primitive enough that they won't interfere!"

"Only that's not quite true, is it?" demanded the Doctor roughly.

The three aliens rubbed their upper limbs frantically along their sides, in a gesture that was totally alien but somehow managed to transmit a sense of embarrassment to John. He briefly wondered if the Tardis was translating body language as well, but the thought drifted to nothing because Sherlock was marching into the room, coat lapels turned up, looking as forbidding as the Doctor himself.

Two of the alien started tapping a foot hurriedly in what, for a human, would have been a gesture of impatience, but from them, conveyed instead fearful nervousness.

"I believe the lady asked you a very valid question," the consulting detective said in his smooth baritone. "Would you care to answer?"

More limb-rubbing.

"It's cheap," blurted out one of them in a mewl.

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed dangerously.

“We aren’t doing anything wrong!” the snivelling alien insisted. “It’s just a bit of business. Nothing wrong with it!”

“Of course not. You want to use this planet as base of operations for your company, that’s fine.” Ignoring the surprised looks he was receiving, Sherlock straightened to his full height, towering over the creatures, and stalked slowly forward, like a panther closing in on its prey: “What I want to know, is how soon you’re planning to get up to date on your payments. Because you seem to have forgotten taxes.”

Three pale green jaws fell open in a very human gesture of incredulity: "What?"

The Doctor muttered: "Oh, that's clever!" and took a half-step back, crossing his arms with a wide grin and leaving Sherlock into the limelight.

In his most condescending drawl, the consulting detective informed them primly: "Don't worry. The United Kingdom has an open, transparent and business-friendly system to encourage the formation of new businesses and an overall lightly taxed economy compared to other regions of our planet. All you have to do is register with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs as an overseas company – or overskies, as it were.”

"What!?"

"The current corporation tax rate is 24 per cent," went on Sherlock, undeterred. "Value added tax is due on all goods and services supplied within our jurisdiction as well as on the importation and acquisition of foreign goods and services..."

"You can't be serious!" the three aliens yowled.

Sherlock regarded them with cold eyes: "I am perfectly serious. I expect you to get all your documents in order post-haste, gentlemen."

"But this is ridiculous! We came here precisely so we wouldn't have to pay...!"

"Seems to me, you came to the wrong place," commented Rose, fighting down a grin.

One of the aliens tried to rally and squared his shoulders determinedly: "We won't--"

The Doctor stood to his full height, storm clouds darkening his eyes frightfully: "This is a Level 5 planet," he told them severely. "Galactic law states clearly that the economic exploitation of the natural or cultural resources of a Level 5 planet must be conducted in accordance with planetary law!"

"But...!"

"If you refuse to comply, I will have no choice but to bring the matter to the attention of the Shadow Proclamation!" he thundered.

“You can't! They'll embargo us! We'll be ruined!”

"Of course," intervened John, with a pretend show of generosity, "you can always renounce your choice to do business on our land. We might be willing to waive what you already owe us if that's the case..."

"I don't see why we should, John,” protested Sherlock swiftly. “After all, they have already been setting up some company holdings here...” He gestured around them, still gazing at them with merciless, icy eyes.

John pretended to ponder this: “I suppose you’re right.”

Looking from Rose's smirk, to John's impassive face, to Sherlock's shark-like expression, to the Doctor's steely gaze, the three entrepreneurs crumbled quickly.

"We should have gone to Pen Haxico 2!" moaned one of them mournfully.

The Doctor grinned, amused: "Yes, yes you should have."

All in all, it took very little time to send them packing and the Doctor did get around to set up the countering of the residual artron field radiation, while Sherlock, superb actor that he was, played the ruthless fiscal agent with pitiless efficiency, never once letting the mentions of things such as the InterGalactic Bank Clan, datacom-net systems and the probable conversion rate of credits to pounds openly faze him, much to the dejected resignation of the three alien businessmen.

Afterwards, somewhat to the Doctor's grumbling, Sherlock insisted on a cab to get back; inside it, silence reigned for a long moment, until John was unable to restrain himself any longer.

“Sherlock Holmes, Defender of Her Majesty's Government Revenue, saving the Earth by taxing space invaders!” The mirth in his voice was unmistakable.

When Sherlock turned a sour look on him, he went for the kill: “Mycroft would be so proud.”

His best friend looked positively ill at the idea.

Back to an alley not far from their flat, where the Doctor had parked the Tardis, John took a last chance at admiring the wonderful ship and stood with a gentle smile under the graceful, vaulted expanse of the control room, head tilted back to watch the softly pulsating central column all the way up to the ceiling.

The Doctor was dancing about the console, as he was wont to do, busying himself with the preparations for takeoff, while Rose was on the phone with her mother.

"Are you leaving, then?" asked Sherlock from the doorstep, where he stood rooted and glaring distrustfully at the coral struts. "There will be questions, I expect, that you might want to be around to answer."

The Doctor straightened and turned to him, arms folded over his chest: "Questions! I hate questions. Sticking around for the tiding up is not my style. You'll manage just fine."

Sherlock sneered, but didn't comment.

"Unless, of course," the Doctor added, leaning his hip against the edge of the console, "you two want to come along?”

"What?!" It came in unison from the two Londoners, one in delighted shock, the other in appalled horror.

John was tempted. Sherlock could see it clear as day. He was longing to accept and fear seized the consulting detective's heart so strongly - and so completely unexpected - that he almost gasped. Immediately, he set to suffocate it with ferocious determination and frantically attempted to retrieve the icy walls that had always shielded him from this kind of pain. Even if he knew it was already too late.

But to his amazed surprise - and never to be voiced gratitude - John's expression fell quickly from longing to rueful, then to content. "Nah... thanks, but- maybe some other time, hm? Just... don't be a stranger, alright?"

He grinned at the alien, warmly and friendly and oh-so-John.

The Doctor regarded him thoughtfully, then nodded in acknowledgment and what Sherlock was almost sure was respect.

Rose just gave John a hug and waved at Sherlock happily, seeing the two of them out of the inconceivable ship (whose very existence was still giving Sherlock a headache) and closing the unnerving wooden doors behind them.

Later, after they'd watched the impossible blue box disappear from that London alley in a crescendo of trumpeting sirens and pulsating light, the two walked leisurely back towards 221B Baker Street, enjoying the cooling down time in the familiar lights of the London night.

And Sherlock had to know.

“Why didn't you go with him?” he blurted out.

John blinked, perplexed: “What?” He half-laughed: “Don't be ridiculous, Sherlock!” he said with an incredulous shrug. “You'd never leave London.”

“Of course I wouldn’t, but... oh. Oh.”

The consulting detective stopped short and stared at his friend, amazed.

John looked back uncomprehendingly. As if he'd just said the most logical and natural thing in the world, and not the most earth-shattering.

Sherlock stuffed his hands in his coat pockets and not-quite-smiled, starting to walk again.

“Dinner?” he asked, because that was what the two of them did.

And sure enough, John promptly answered: “Starving.”

Ten minutes later, he was risking a cracked rib from the effort of not laughing while he watched Sherlock put the Doctor's psychic paper to good use to pass them off as hygiene inspectors and get their Chinese for free.


	5. The day the Earth died in a ball of flame.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hermione Granger,” the witch answered automatically, instilled manners kicking in even in this rather absurd situation. “This is Ron Weasley, and that's Harry Potter. Wait, doctor who?”

“Brilliant! Oh, yes! Nine hundred plus years and I've never seen the like!”

The three friends pivoted to face the unexpected voice, wands drawn and ready. As they had countless times during the war, the two tall frames of Harry and Ron enclosed Hermione's more petite body, their arms unwavering as they kept their wands trained on the possible threat.

A slim, handsome man with thick brown hair and pale skin scattered with freckles grinned at them and leaned forward to examine Ron's wand closely, without taking his hands out of his ankle-long tan coat.

Underneath it, he appeared to be wearing a brown suit with blue pinstripes, a light blue shirt, a tie and... Converse shoes.

Surprised by his muggle attire as much as by his words and attitude, the three exchanged quick, confused glances. None of them dropped their guard, though. Painful experience had taught them better and anyway, they had just been forced to _reducto_ in self-defence – the dust was still settling – a golden man wearing a weird, white and gold blotched skin suit, which had somehow transformed into a mass of tentacles and lashed out at them. Circumspection was just common-sense under the circumstances, really.

"How did you do that?" the stranger asked quite cheerfully.

Hermione, by unspoken agreement the diplomat of the group, asked cautiously, but politely: "What are you referring to, sir?"

"That axonoid. I saw you blow it up. We-ell... I say blow up, but really, what you did was more like blast it into a fine mist - demolecularization, I'm assuming? And it seems like you used this wooden stick to achieve the effect - it is wood, isn't it? The casing, at least? Willow wood, I’d say, very flexible, very versatile too, but not in the least technological. This is really quite remarkable, you know. Never seen the like, and trust me, I've seen a lot. It's brilliant!"

He was bending his head here and there to get all perspectives on Ron's wand as he spoke, examining it with fascination and casually invading the redhead's personal space, much to his scowling discomfort.

He also appeared completely unfazed by the threatening wands trained on him.

It looked more and more as if he was just a muggle - a scientist most likely, and a curious one at that. Hermione grimaced as she came to the realization that they would have to _obliviate_ him, if that was the case; she'd never liked that spell.

Quite unexpectedly, the man reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and whipped out something that flashed like metal.

They jolted in automatic reaction, disarming charms springing out of their mouth without much input from the brain - just a knee-jerk instinct; but the man avoided the red beams with effortless grace and, far from being alarmed, merely looked delighted and, if possible, even more intrigued.

The three friends gaped, more and more confused by this strange man and just a little embarrassed at seeing that the thing in his hand wasn't a wand, or even a muggle weapon: just a thin metal tube with a glowing blue diode at one end. Although it was obvious that it could do _something_ : it was buzzing as the strange man ran it over their wands as if he was scanning them for information - all the while muttering gibberish to himself, without the slightest care for how rude he was being.

"Truly fascinating. Willow, hah, I was right, and holly... and is that vine wood? Different lengths, different width, and yet they clearly have the same function... or should I say, functions? Obviously they are multi-purpose tools... Weird, though," he frowned in concentration, straightening up with a thoughtful expression: "They don't register as technology at all."

“ 'Course not,” said Ron bluntly. “They're wands."

"Ron!" hissed Hermione, alarmed. It was apparent that this was just a muggle and, obliviating possibilities aside, they couldn't violate the Statute of Secrecy so cavalierly!

But her boyfriend ignored her and scowled at the odd chap: "And for your information, it's rude to touch someone else's wand, so back off!"

The man's deep brown eyes widened in amused amazement: "Wands? What, like magic sticks?" He smiled, pleased and patronizing: "A lot of technology can be mistaken for magical," he said condescendingly. "I think someone said it very well, too. Oh, who was it? Oh, yes! Arthur C. Clarke! Hm, now there's a thought. I should visit. It might be interesting to have a chat with him..."

"Blimey, you talk a lot," muttered Harry, finally deciding that the man, however strange, was not a threat and lowering his wand.

Ron, however, was not convinced and raised his own wand even more. He glared: "It's not technology. It's magic. And I told you to back off!”

The strange man raised his head to stare at him, meeting his gaze with deep, completely unafraid eyes. For a long moment, he looked steadily into Ron, making him fidget; then suddenly he beamed a lovely yet unnerving smile. “Brilliant! You, sir, don't look like a loony at all--”

Ron’s outraged “Hey!” went ignored.

“--yet you are really, utterly convinced of what you're saying. In this day and age! Oh, this is so very interesting."

The absurd muggle took out a pair of black-rimmed spectacles, which he donned before returning his attention to Ron's wand and babbling on: "It might just be possible that this is a form of partially psychic technology - responding to your belief that it will work by working as you believe it will work. Truly brilliant. Have you ever tried dissecting one of these tool? No, I suppose it never crossed your mind...”

Their jaws fell in incredulity and horror at the casual mention of _dissecting a wand_ , but the weird man was spared the explosion that the stormy clouds gathering over Ron's face promised because hurried steps echoed in the narrow alley they were ensconced in.

They all turned to the furthest corner and soon they spotted a pretty, blonde girl running round it. She was more or less their age, dressed unassumingly in jeans and a pink t-shirt with glittering silver doodles.

“Doctor!” she screamed as she caught sight of them, not slowing down in the least. “They're coming!”

“Doctor?” asked Hermione. “You're a doctor?” Her guess was right then - muggle, _and_ a scientist.

“Never mind that,” said Harry quickly. “Who, exactly, is coming?”

"Axonoids," came the man's merry reply. "You met one, remember? Blew it up earlier?"

"What?" yelped Rose, surprised.

"With wood sticks!" told her the Doctor in a delighted tone, making her grin, and everybody else's jaw drop. Then he turned to the three, as if in afterthought: "This is Rose, by the way, Rose Tyler.”

“Hi!” The girl waved a little, smiling brightly at their stunned expressions.

“And I'm the Doctor. Who are you?”

“Hermione Granger,” the witch answered automatically, instilled manners kicking in even in this rather absurd situation. “This is Ron Weasley, and that's Harry Potter. Wait, doctor who?”

For a moment, the strange man faltered, as if hit by an unexpected memory, and looked at them with such an intense and focused stare that they felt x-rayed; but there was a good degree of disorientation in his eyes as well.

However, he quickly shook himself out of it and returned to grinning widely: “Just the Doctor. Nice to meet you Hermione, Ron, Harry,” he nodded at each of them.

He frowned once more, eyes distant, like he was trying to puzzle something out; but a warning shout from Rose made him spin around just as three more of the golden humanoids in the blotched white skin suits rounded the corner, much more slowly than Rose had, but also much more threateningly.

The skin of their faces was metallic gold, with etchings of curly hair and sightless gold eyes that reminded Hermione of shop window dummies.

With one hand, the Doctor whipped off his glasses and stuffed them into a pocket, while with the other, he fiddled with his strange tube-like device for a moment, before he turned, standing straight and protective before them, one hand outstretched as if he was holding a wand instead of... whatever the glowing metal stick was, that he was pointing to the advancing humanoids.

Utterly confused, Harry muttered to his best friends: "What do you think that is, anyway?"

It was the newly arrived girl, Rose, who whispered back knowledgeably: "Sonic screwdriver."

The three friends slanted her incredulous looks, but almost at once returned their attention to the mad muggle in the long coat, who was counting down: "Three... two... one!"

There wasn't any overly-scenic effect, but the three creatures advancing on them abruptly stopped, keened, and collapsed into a confusing mass of tentacles, which wriggled feebly for a moment before stilling. A stink Harry usually associated with eviscerating flobberworms during detention, and Hermione with her parents' septic tank, rose from the vaguely disgusting remains.

"Urgh. Gross," was Rose's succinct comment.

They all took a couple steps closer, intrigued against their better judgment. Hermione was slack-jawed with shock; Harry nudged the closest tentacle with a foot, peering interestedly at it.

"What spell did you use?" asked Ron, grudgingly curious.

The Doctor looked at him in amusement: "Spell? Seriously?" He shook his head condescendingly: "Simple science, I'm afraid. Broadcasting a signal intrusion to cut them off from the Axos - which essentially kills them. Kind of like a limb being cut off from its body. Nothing magical at all!"

Harry nudged a tentacle again, squishing it slightly; Hermione hissed at him primly: “Stop it already!” and then started scrutinizing the surprising muggle scientist. There was something really odd about him.

The Doctor, for his part, had put his sonic screwdriver away and was once more examining the three of them, a faraway look on his face. He didn't look preoccupied, or perplexed; merely puzzled.

"Doctor? What's wrong?" asked Rose, worried.

The man, however, ignored her and said absently: "You know, you three really look familiar. I don't... for some reason I just can't place you - and that is very, very strange let me tell you, because I have a fantastic memory - but I just don't remember you - except that I do. Maybe. Possibly. Like a déjà-vu..."

He was frowning fiercely, evidently trying to work out the problem.

"Uhm... Doctor?" tried Rose, carefully. "Not to be offensive, but you're 900 years old. You can't possibly remember everything. Maybe you met them a few centuries ago and..."

"What? 900 years old?! But that's ridiculous!" burst out Ron, who hadn't stopped glaring suspiciously at the weird muggle in the long coat. "No one lives more than 150, 160 years at most!"

Talking over him, the Doctor protested indignantly: "I have a fantastic memory, Rose, I would most certainly remember them if I'd ever met them!"

The blonde girl however had turned wide eyes on Ron: "160 years? ...Wait, are you even human? 'Cause I'm pretty sure my species only lives, like, 80 years or so, on average..."

"What do you mean, are we human?! Do we look like, what, mermaids to you?" cried Ron, face reddening in anger.

"Ron, she didn’t mean it like that. Muggles don't live as long as wizards, that’s all," lectured Hermione tiredly, "and-- Rose, was it? Of course we're human, but having magic makes us longer-lived." She sighed, having given up on the Statute of Secrecy since Ron seemed determined to break it; she really didn't like Obliviation - and she was going to point this out to her boyfriend later, _in detail_.

"Again with the magic," muttered the Doctor, rolling his eyes.

"Magic?!" Rose's warm brown eyes went so big they looked on the brink of popping out. "Like, real magic?"

"Yup!" quipped Harry, who’d lost interest in the smelly tentacles at last. "Took me a while to believe, too," he confided with a smile.

“Wait, wait, wait... Speccy git with unruly hair, tall ginger-head, bushy-haired know-it-all!" the Doctor pointed dramatically to each of them in turn. "And magic! Now why does this sound familiar? Why!” He clasped his hands behind his back and paced.

The three friends exchanged uneasy glances.

Had this muggle stumbled upon a wizarding magazine, perchance? The war had been over for less than two years and all three of them had had ample opportunity to clash with the consequences of the celebrity status that hounded them since the Battle of Hogwarts. Even Ron had grown tired of the fame, and the side dish of endless and pointless gossip that followed them everywhere these days.

Harry in particular felt morose – the man dressed and talked like a muggle, he couldn't possibly know them, could he? There was simply no way a muggle would have heard of the Boy-Who-Lived nonsense. Right? Right?

Deciding to try and distract the strange man before he could figure out that he’d read about them in some gossip rag or something, he cut into his path: "Alright, look," he said forcefully. "I don't know who you are or where you're from and I don't know why you think you know us and I don't particularly care about any of that. But you know what those things are, right? The white-and-gold-and-tentacled ones? So how about you tell us?"

"I did tell you!" protested the Doctor indignantly. "They're axonoids. They're part of Axos!"

“What on Earth are axos?” wondered Hermione, a little miffed that she'd never come across the term in all her studies.

“No, no, it's singular. An Axos. No, rather, the Axos. It's a composite creature.”

“And what does that mean?” asked Harry, with what he felt was remarkable patience.

The Doctor straightened and adopted the universal tone of teachers in lecture mode: "Axos it at once a biological creature and a spaceship, while axonoids are extensions of it, somewhat independent, but telepathically linked in such a way that Axos can control them, and each element can feel what the others do."

The three friends gaped at him.

The Doctor ignored their reaction and merely went on: “The Axos is a scavenger entity. It has already come to Earth, I remember it quite clearly. And it wasn't here. We-ell... it was _here_ , actually, but not _now_. Though it wasn't all that far either. For some reason or other, it seems to like 20th century London. I wonder why?”

Rose grinned cheekily: "You seem to like this time period too, though. Maybe it's a timeframe that has some sort of... great... cosmic... significance..." she waved her hands expressively.

The Doctor mock-glared at her: "Or," he drawled, "it could just be an amazing coincidence."

"Hold on!" exclaimed Ron, with the slightest trace of panic in his voice: “What do you mean, came to Earth? Where would it come _from_?”

"I think he's saying that these creatures are aliens," said Hermione faintly.

"One creature," précised the Doctor. "And you are quite correct--"

"What? Like in Mad Muggle Martin? Hermione, that's just comics! It's not real! It's just the kind of lies muggles tell themselves to justify what happens when the Department for Experimental Charms loses control!"

“You keep using the word ‘muggle’, what is it supposed to mean anyway?” wondered the Doctor.

"I'm not saying they're truly aliens, Ron, just that that's what this doctor is saying..." replied Hermione, utterly ignoring the man in the pinstriped suit, much to his indignation.

Ron, of course, turned to her immediately with a heated retort; Harry, rather more practical and in many ways, more open minded than his dearest friends, moved on to his usual practice of tuning their exchange out: “Why is it here? What does it want?” he asked the strange man, who brightened instantly at being paid attention to.

Hermione and Ron – as was often their wont – stopped their bickering in favour of protesting against his believing 'this nutter'.

The Doctor, evidently choosing to take his cue from Harry, tuned them out too and focused only on the green-eyed young man. He threw his hands into his coat pockets and balanced on the back of his feet: “Last time axonoids were here... Supposedly, they came for fuel. Axos’ real motivations were to drain all energy from Earth, with an ultimate plan to gain the secret of time travel, allowing it to feast anywhere in space and time."

"Why is it always a conquer-the-universe kind of scenario with you?" grumbled Rose, though her excited half-smile belied her words.

Harry eyed her warily: "Always?"

The widening of her grin was the opposite of reassuring.

Hermione's arms crossed before her chest in a tense manner that Harry and Ron had learned to be wary of: "Are you trying to get us to believe," she said very, very calmly, "that these things are alien from a galaxy far away, and they're on Earth for a pit-stop?" Her voice raised progressively until it was positively shrilling.

"No, no, no!" exclaimed the Doctor, eyes wide and full of innocence. "Not a different galaxy at all. The Axos worlds were simply on the edge of the Mutter's Spiral - what you lot call the Milky Way."

Three deadpan glares centred on him.

"It's the same galaxy!" protested the Doctor earnestly.

Rose chuckled.

"If it has worlds of its own, why does it want Earth?" asked Harry, though in a resigned tone.

Because, really. He might only have heard the movies from his cupboard at the Dursleys’, but he did know the drill: aliens always wanted to invade Earth. If you believed in aliens, that is. Which… all things considered… wasn’t any more of a stretch than believing in magic, and in Dark Lords always wanting to conquer the world.

Ron, however, had grown up with very different expectations from reality.

"Harry!" he shouted, aghast. "You can't possibly believe this nutter! Look, just come with me to the Ministry, we'll report our sightings, it's obviously something confiscated that escaped, I bet they're already on the problem."

"Well, by this point in time, those worlds were crippled by extreme solar flare activity and subsequent entropic effects, being drained of all life and energy," the Doctor answered Harry, as if Ron's outburst hadn't happened. "Awful destiny, albeit quite common for solar systems the universe over. Still, like any sufficiently advanced civilization, the people living there came up with a plan for survival beyond their worlds' end. Namely, Axos."

Ron muttered something along the lines of "Ridiculous!" but was ignored.

Hermione, for her part, was looking at the Doctor in uncertain fascination.

It was Rose who asked, with her usual curiosity: "What do you mean?"

He grinned back at her fondly and explained: "Axos was a creature grown specifically for the escape journey. The last remnant of their culture! It was designed to be a scavenger, sucking energy from planets to continue its voyage. Last time it came to Earth - oh, what was it? The Seventies? The Eighties? Doesn't matter. It tried to start a 'feeding cycle'. Axonoids met with UNIT and promised them axonite to enlarge food and end world hunger.” He shook his head in mock-disappointment: “UNIT, of course, jumped on the chance and ordered worldwide distribution."

"Unit?" interrupted Harry in confusion.

"Unified Intelligence Taskforce," clarified the Doctor.

"Oh, ok," commented Harry doubtfully. He'd never heard of it. Then again, it's not like he had a clear idea of what branches there were in his governments - either the magical or the muggle one.

Hermione was a little more confident in her own knowledge, however: "Hold on, I never heard a word about this. There isn’t such a thing as this UNIT you talk of. And, an attempt at solving the world hunger problem?... Shouldn't I have studied such a thing in school? What is axonite anyway?" she demanded suspiciously.

"Government cover-ups are a lot more frequent than you probably suspect," said the Doctor diplomatically.

"Yeah, we have some idea of it..." muttered Harry, thinking of a certain Welsh Dragon flying over London.

Hermione shook her head despairingly: “But this makes no sense,” she muttered.

"The point isn't how easily humans can be kept in the dark;” said the Doctor, waving a hand impatiently. “The point is, I know what Axos is capable of, because I was here when it came before. In fact, I was the one who realised it planned to drain the planet of all its energy and stopped it," he added smugly.

"You?!" exclaimed Ron, incredulous and derisive.

Harry raised his eyebrows: "How?"

The Doctor brightened: "Oh, it was very clever. The axonoids took power from a nuclear power plant and later--"

"No, I meant, how did you stop them?" précised Harry, a little impatiently. A plan of action sounded good now - better than a history lesson, to be sure!

"We-elll... it involved a rather dangerous bluff and quite a few clever moves on my part, if I say so myself, but basically, I placed the Axos in a time loop, which should have kept it confined until it decayed naturally, sometime six billion years in the future. Theoretically. Unfortunately, it's like every time I put someone into a time loop, someone else decides to get them out!” the Doctor grumbled.

"What? Who would be so stupid?" blurted out Harry, even as an increasingly agitated Hermione started questioning what on Earth did he mean by a 'time loop'.

"British explorers, as a matter of fact," replied the Doctor despondently. "Mid 21st-century, there was a global energy crisis on Earth, economy crash, political unrest, fanatics predicting the end of civilization, the usual. Britain authorized the attempt at piercing the temporal containment because they hoped to use Axos' power for a new age of energy for the planet.” He snorted. “Of course, it went all wrong: Axos turned their transmitter into a receiver and began feeding on the Space Defence Station in Devesham--"

“Hold on. Stop,” interjected Hermione. “When you say ‘time loop’…” She trailed off, then changed course: “No, wait. Wait a minute. Mid-21st century?” She glared at him in naked disbelief: “Doctor, we're in the late 20th century now!" she protested in a rather exasperated tone.

"I know that," the Doctor said, looking baffled. "Your point?"

Hermione's mouth opened and closed uselessly.

"Were you involved again?" asked Rose interestedly.

"How can he possibly have been involved in something that hasn't happened yet?" asked Hermione shrilly.

"Time travel," answered the Doctor smugly. "And yes, Rose, I was. After all, the Tardis makes for an extremely juicy bait... o-oh, that sounded so wrong." He pulled a face. "Anyway! Things happened, but eventually, I managed to make creative use of the fast return switch at just the right time to send Axos back into the time loop and trap it again, this time for good! Had to use nuclear missiles to ensure it, though. Urgh. That was a rather awful adventure, all in all."

He beamed brightly and Rose smiled as well.

That was about the point when Hermione lost composure: "Stop blabbing such nonsense!" she shrieked. "Time travel indeed! You don't - you can't travel in time, you don't even believe in magic - and there's no muggle technology for it! And years into the future? Ha! You can't go to the future - I should know, I've used a time-turner for an entire year!"

Ron grabbed her in a hug to soothe her: "Hey, it's ok. Of course he isn't making sense. Honestly, love. Can't you tell he's a complete nutter?"

"Oi!" started the Doctor, indignantly, then changed track abruptly: "Wait. Wait, wait: you time-travelled? On a regular basis? You aren't supposed to have time travelling technology this soon in Earth's timeline!"

"There's no technology for it!" yelled Hermione back. "It's magic! And it's restricted! The Ministry of Magic has passed literally hundreds of laws restricting Time-Turners, Professor McGonagall had to write all sorts of letters so I could have one, tell them that I was a model student, and that I'd never, ever use it for anything except attending several classes at once..."

"Attending classes. Attending classes?! You meddled with time just to go to class?!" The Doctor stared at her as if he'd never happened upon anything so ridiculously horrifying in his life. "Of all the irresponsible...!"

"I wasn't irresponsible!" shrieked Hermione.

Harry coughed, remembering the night they helped Sirius, but it went ignored as the Doctor thundered: "The damage you risked...!"

Ron scowled at him, releasing Hermione and stepping threateningly towards him: "Stop shouting! Don't you see you're upsetting her? Calm down, alright!"

"Calm down!" the Doctor yelped, and pointed an accusatory finger at the redhead. "Don't you tell me to calm down. Do you even have an idea of how disastrous it would be to face a full-blown paradox? Do you? Huh?” He ran a hand through his hair and Rose knew him enough to notice he was actually nervous. “Bloody humans! Always throwing yourself into things without thinking. Do you even…? Argh! Hopping about timelines without knowing what you do, you could end up altering someone's life path in such a drastic fashion that it would create temporal anomalies such as-- such as un-births!" He cried. "How would you like to have never been born? Huh? Huh? Any breach in the laws of time can result in catastrophic events!"

"That's why the most stringent laws and penalties are in place to prevent the misuse of Time-Turners!" retorted Hermione furiously, her voice a crescendo: "Everybody knows that time-related magic is unstable. And that is not the point because you are a muggle and muggles do not have the means to travel in time and even if they did they couldn't go to the future because no-one can! There is no form of time-manipulating magic that can take you forward in time. You can only go to the past! And not even that much!"

By this point Hermione and the Doctor were shouting over each other and Ron was, rather ineffectually, shouting at both of them.

A little to the side, Harry and Rose exchanged glances that were a little helpless and a little amused.

 _Any idea?_ mouthed Harry jerking his head towards the three bickerers.

Rose bit her lower lip in thought, then shot Harry a mischievous grin: she put two fingers to her mouth and whistled sharply.

Silence fell.

"If you three don't stop this nonsense and behave, I'll put you in the corner!" she told them severely, hands on her hips and body slightly bent forward, exactly like her mother used to scold her when she was a kid. "I mean it. I am very, very cross!"

The three of them gaped at her like fish, with identical expression of childish befuddlement, and she bit the inside of her mouth to stop herself from laughing.

Harry didn't bother to censor himself and collapsed against the nearest wall, guffawing.

The Doctor glanced from him to Rose sheepishly, a hand rubbing the back of his head.

"But he's not making any sense," wailed Hermione plaintively, though without the forcefulness of earlier. "You can't travel to the future, you just can't!"

Rose regarded her in surprise and the Doctor scoffed, but it was Harry who replied, in his most reasonable tone: "You know, Hermione, you haven't considered the possibility that they might be _from_ the future. Then this would be their past and therefore they could come here. Err, now. Err..." said Harry, starting off confidently and getting himself a little confused along the way.

"That's not how it work, because time is not linear. But hey! Good thinking. Very logical," praised the Doctor.

Harry perked up.

Hermione shot him a betrayed look.

“Anyway, Rose is right… no point overreacting – I’ll just… I’ll check things over later, make sure you didn’t do any serious damage… and dispose of whatever technology you stumbled upon…”

“I didn’t do any damage! And who are you to judge that, anyway?” fumed Hermione.

“No need for that, we destr…err, that is, the Time-Turners were all destroyed… during the war, yeah,” nodded Harry earnestly.

“Oh?” The Doctor raised his eyebrows, his unease growing more obvious, but Rose didn’t give him time to ask for more: "Doctor? She sort of has a point, though. Not for us," she added hastily, when he scowled at her, "but, well, does the Axos travel in time too? Because if it doesn't, whatever happened in the mid-21st century hasn't happened yet. Right?"

The Doctor pondered for a moment: "Rose Tyler, you might just be onto something there."

Abandoning the argument entirely, he paced the width of the alley, letting his coat billow about him every time he turned sharply back and forth. "As far as I know, it can only do basic time travel, nothing impressive - at the most, move a few seconds backwards and forwards in time."

"What's the good in that?" asked Rose baffled.

"Oh, I don't know... escape being struck by missiles by jumping forward in time for the seconds it would take the missiles to reach and pass through its current location, for instance." He grinned briefly. "Things like that."

"Useful," commented Harry with equanimity.

"Which means!" cried the Doctor twirling around dramatically. "That the whole getting stuck in the moment of its own destruction hasn't happened yet, from the Axos' point of view. Just like you said." He grinned at Rose.

She grinned back: "So, this is what? One of the many attempts at taking over Earth?" She grimaced. "And how sad is it, that such a sentence sounds normal to me?"

The Doctor ignored that: "Possibly. Probably. Hm, I wonder how many times I'll have to stop it, yet. There was that time Mary Shelley and I met some axonoids too..."

"Mary Shelley?!" asked Rose with a huge grin. " _Frankenstein_ 's Mary Shelley?"

"Long story," the Doctor waved her off.

"You," said Hermione very precisely, "are not making any sense." She was glaring at him with all her not inconsiderable might. "Non-linear time!" She threw her hands up, completely fed-up. "Going to the future! Hah!" she scoffed. "Magic can only bring you back in time and the longest period that can be travelled without serious chance of harm to the traveller or time itself is around five hours!"

The Doctor rolled his eyes: "The ridiculous theories about time people come up with will never cease to amuse me. Really. This one's almost as good as the Linawers' - no, wait, no-one's come up with anything as funny as the Linawers' theory. They think you can only move _sideways_ in time - sliding through holes in the time vortex.” He sounded almost gloating. “Oh, and the Doraners of Soigol IV! They think you can travel in time by racing around inside a toroidal hole enveloped within a sphere of normal matter that, theoretically, warps the space-time around it - kind of like a cosmic doughnut.”

He gave Rose a silly grin: “Imagine running along the hole of a yeast-raised doughnut... oh, you would probably slip on all that glaze. And the weirdly coloured fancy toppings! I like the fancy toppings. You know," he looked thoughtfully in the distance, "I don’t think I’ve tried doughnuts in this body yet - we really should drop by some Dutch settlers in 19th century North America, Rose. What do you say? Although we might not recognize what we find - they were called _oliekoek_ back then and were all sorts of shapes. It was Hanson Gregory who invented the ring-shaped doughnut. 1847 – he was only 16 years old! Now, that’s creativity for you. I remember his mother, lovely woman. Met her while he was off at sea aboard a lime-trading ship and she taught me the technique along with her recipe. The secret,” he confided to the bemused blonde, “is to punch the hole in the centre of dough with a tin pepper box. Or, no, wait!” he cried suddenly. “I have a better idea! Let’s go to Cofeeny Town on Dunkin III, Rose. They have the best Doughnuts Duelling Competition in the whole galaxy – all sorts of frosted, glazed, powdered, sweetened and filled fried dough confectionery! And I do mean _all_ sorts - ooh! I wonder if they make it with banana filling?"

Suddenly realizing he was rambling down a very long-winded tangent, and also that he'd digressed rather a lot from the original topics of discussion, the Doctor shut his mouth and glanced at his current companions, abashed.

The three newly-met humans were staring at him in various degrees of disbelief or amusement (a set of reactions the Doctor was growing ever more familiar with in this incarnation). Thankfully, Rose was grinning fondly at him, eyes sparkling as usual. That rather cheered him up.

"You are completely mad," said Hermione flatly.

"Well, where do you get off criticizing me?" protested the Doctor, pouting like a child. "At least I'm not blabbing away about magic!"

"What's wrong with magic?" asked Ron angrily, offended.

The Doctor rolled his eyes: "There is no such thing as magic."

Hermione snorted, looking down on the Doctor: "I realize it's hard to accept for a scientist, but magic does exist," she said condescendingly.

"Please!" exclaimed the Doctor disparagingly. "It's just an everyday name for science. Like voodoo dolls – honestly! Manipulating a puppet to affect a living body? _You_ might call that magic. _I'd_ call it a DNA replication module.”

Hermione's eyes narrowed: “And how do you call this?” She waved her wand quickly and a pile of garbage nearby got itself up and coalesced into a transfigured pig.

The Doctor's sonic screwdriver was out and whirring even before Rose's startled exclamations had rung out.

“Interesting,” he muttered, getting his glasses out one-handed and peering through them at the pig. The animal oinked.

"Well?" asked Hermione smugly. "What do you say to that?"

"We-ell... it could be a Wexelian extrapolator... except they're more for synthesizing raw materials than anything… or perhaps a Shiranoi printer, but no, that's too small - I always thought it was a waste that their technology tended to take up whole rooms, they might have done well with some microchips..."

"Are you serious?" asked Hermione in befuddled disbelief. "You'd rather think it's alien then accept it's magic?"

"There's no such thing as magic," said the Doctor, still focused on the pig, now preoccupied with rooting around. "There are, however, a number of technologies able to achieve the mutation of basic molecular structure and all of them would be utterly alien to this planet at this point in time, though to be fair, none of them should be able to transform non-living into living matter...”

"Hah!"

"Then again," he went on, straightening up, "Block Transfer Computations could create or re-create any object or spacetime event, provided enough mathematical information was supplied... and guess what? Axos, being by nature morphologically unstable living organic matter, is perfectly capable of performing Block Transfer Computations and surviving the stress. And of course, last time there were axonoids all around, some of the axonite was kept -- You know, there's a thought. You might be somehow manipulating axonite!” he exclaimed, looking pleased with himself.

"He really does talk a lot," murmured Ron to Rose, as an aside.

"Don't I know it," she smiled back.

“What, pray tell, is axonite?” grumbled Hermione with narrowed eyes.

The Doctor beamed excitedly: “It's a thinking molecule. The chameleon of the elements! It's pretty amazing, it can use the energy it absorbs to copy, recreate or restructure any given substance. It can enlarge or shrink organisms, absorb, convert, transmit and program all forms of energy. As long as the energy exists, it can do pretty much anything with it." He swirled to a stop and was suddenly, unnervingly serious: "That's why we must starve it."

"You've stopped making sense again," deadpanned Hermione.

“No, no, no, listen: Axos has nutrition and energy cycles. They need to be replenished, and if they're not, it'll die. Hopefully for good, though considering that it is grown from a single cell, that's doubtful. I mean, just a single cell surviving would mean a chance to grow again, and then we'd be back to square one. Again. But that's ok. It'll work in the here and now! We can worry about other times some other time.”

He grinned delightedly: “Oh, that was a good turn of phrase.”

“It was really not,” retorted a very stressed Hermione. "And I've never heard of axonite before, but I'm rather sure it's got nothing to do with our abilities, alright? We're wizards. Well, they're wizards, I'm a witch. We have the ability to use magic. We're born like that. And I know it's hard for a scientist to accept, I really do, but it's true. It's all true. And it has nothing to do with this Axos creature of yours!"

"Technically, it's not mine..." the Doctor trailed off under her glare and smiled a little uncomfortably.

Before they had a chance to continue their discussion, Harry, who, half out of habit, half out of instinct, had wandered to the end of the alley to check out things, shouted a warning: "There's more of those axo-things!"

Sure enough, another couple of the golden, white-clad creatures were advancing on them. A moment later, a low buzz and the smell of ozone warned them of the abrupt arrival of three more at their backs.

"They can apparate?" yelled Ron in shock.

"If by that you mean 'they can use a common transmat to materialize here'... then yes."

The Doctor used his sonic screwdriver to collapse the three at their back but as soon as they went down, four more appeared to take their place.

"Oops!" commented the Doctor lightly. "Looks like the Axos has a grip on our position. We shouldn’t have stayed in one place so long."

Wasting no more time, Harry sent a _reducto_ at the mouth of the alley, blowing one of the menacing creature up and scattering the others.

The Doctor grabbed Rose's hand and yelled: "Run!"

And for some reasons, Harry, Ron and Hermione found themselves doing just that, their hurried steps pounding after the weird stranger and the blonde girl, as if it was sensible.

Somehow, though, it felt right.

"This way!" shouted the Doctor, far too happily.

Rose's hand was securely in his and they moved together with the same fluid grace Harry, Ron and Hermione had built among themselves in years of friendship. In fact, Ron's hand had found Hermione's in a very similar way, barely even noticing. The three of them smiled at each other as they ran, despite the danger and confusion they were in. Oh, yes. It felt right.

After a few apparently random turns, they ran into an alley, utterly indistinguishable from all the others in the neighbourhood, except for the fact that this one contained a blue telephone box.

" _Et voilà!_ " exclaimed the Doctor, stopping so abruptly that the three friends bumped into each other to avoid careening into him. 

Rose passed him by fluidly, letting his hand go to fetch a small key on a silvery chain out of her t-shirt, key which she quickly fitted to the lock of the 'police phone box' - as the writings upon it declared it.

"Welcome to my Tardis!" said the Doctor, looking like a proud parent at his child's first dance exhibition, and he waved them in after Rose, who'd left the door open for them, going in.

Without hesitation, the three of them ran inside... and stopped with a gasp of awe.

The big, circular room gave off the kind of feeling Hogwarts had welcomed them with year after year: of a building who was alive, of a living being which was a world. Welcoming gold and orange light blended into green and blue shadows, and harmonious coral forks grew out of and into metallic grilles and panelled walls.

It was beautiful, and powerful.

The Doctor strolled in after them, smug as the cat who got the canary. He closed the door gently and threw his coat casually on one of the coral forks as he jumped up to the console eagerly.

"This is lovely," said Harry with genuine admiration, walking up the ramp a little ways.

"Yeah," admitted Ron, a little unwillingly. "It's pretty fantastic. Woah, look at those!" he exclaimed, mouth open in wonder at the golden hexagons that dotted the walls.

The Doctor and Rose seemed to be waiting for something else, but whatever it was, it didn't come: Harry and Ron just wandered lazily around the console room, admiring the faintly pulsing rotor and the huge coral trunks all around, and for an awkward moment the conversation stalled, as the two very strange muggles just looked at them, a little baffled.

“What?” Ron asked finally, perplexed.

The Doctor was startled out of his bewilderment and smiled brightly: "Nothing!" He turned quickly to the haphazard collection of buttons and levers that littered the central console and busied himself with something.

“It's just that usually people comment on...” Rose gestured around her meaningfully.

“What?” asked Harry, just as confused.

Rose and the Doctor exchanged a glance. “Um. The fact that... the inside's bigger than the outside?” she tried.

“What's strange with that?” asked Ron obliviously.

The Doctor's eyes widened, as he yet again stared intensely at Ron, as if studying him against some sort of blueprint in his mind, then he pretended to shrug it off: “Nothing! Nothing at all! _Allons-y!_ ”

He pulled a lever forcefully and a wheezing, groaning noise started up while he bent on the console, pushing a few more buttons.

“You’re not muggles. You’re aliens,” came Hermione's voice, which sounded at once vindicated and critical.

With a start, Harry and Ron realized that she hadn't budged from the entrance. "This… this is all alien."

The Doctor raised his head and stared at her: “Yes,” he said simply.

Rose frowned worriedly at the brown-haired girl.

“What?” yelped Harry, making his way back to his best friend. “What makes you say that? He looks human.”

“What do you mean 'alien'?” asked Ron at the same time.

" _You_ look Time Lord-ish," muttered the Doctor sullenly.

“It's bigger on the inside,” pointed out Hermione.

“Exactly!” beamed Rose, though not as brightly as usual; while the Doctor straightened and pointed at Hermione with a triumphant "Ah-ha!"

“What do you mean 'alien'?” repeated Ron, more forcefully. "And what's wrong with things being bigger on the inside?"

"Muggles can't do that, Ron!" exclaimed Hermione exasperatedly, even as the Doctor strolled up to Ron, explaining: “It means that I'm... pretty foreign, let's say. I spend my time travelling through the stars."

"You... travel in space," repeated Harry, eyeing the Doctor with a mix of incredulity and envy.

"And time!" agreed the Doctor enthusiastically.

“That's strange,” said Rose in a helpful tone, regarding Ron carefully.

“Doesn't seem any stranger than Centaurs,” the red-head commented with a shrug. "They're pretty hung-up on stars too."

“Centaurs!” The Doctor's eyes lit up with enthusiastic wonder and he smiled more widely still: “Real, actual, Centaurs? Where?”

Rose rolled her eyes good-naturedly: "Not now, Doctor! Axonoid invasion, remember?"

"Right!" He seemed to shake himself out and returned his attention to piloting.

"But Ron!" cried Hermione, exasperated. "They're muggles!"

"Very cool muggles," commented Harry, earning himself a beaming smile from the Doctor.

The red-head's eyes widened. "Wait, you mean this isn't magic?" he asked wonderingly. "Blimey!"

"There's no such thing as magic," said the Doctor absently.

Ignoring Hermione's tired: "Yes, there is!" he went on: "This is my ship. It's called the Tardis. T-A-R-D-I-S. That's 'Time and Relative Dimension in Space'.”

This gave Hermione's pause. “You mean... you really can travel between any point in space and time? Without magic… without limits… and without restrictions?”

"Exactly!" the Doctor beamed. “Well, mostly without restrictions,” he added as an afterthought.

"How?" exhaled Hermione.

"What?"

"How do you travel in time? This isn't magic - so what makes it go?"

"You wouldn't understand."

"Try me!"

The Doctor rolled his eyes: "Alright, let's see. Dumbing things down... A grown Tardis is a dimensionally transcendent being capable of existing in, as well as moving backwards and forwards along, what, in the reduced dimensional awareness of your race, would be perceived as several time-space loops spliced together, although if you did perceive it, it wouldn't be what you perceive - because of quantum. And if you wish to be told how I can pilot her, you shall have to learn my language, which is impossible I might add, because English simply doesn’t have enough words to express the necessary concepts.”

The brown-haired witch was gaping at him with a lost expression in her eyes.

“Just nod when he stops for breath, it's easier,” said Rose kindly.

Ron smiled at her: “Exactly what I do with Hermione.”

Said girl huffed in irritation.

“Look,” said the Doctor a little more gently. “You don't really want to know. Seriously, way to take the fun and the mystery out of everything!”

"Well, I for one think it's brilliant!" said Harry decisively. He was on the other side of the rotor from the Doctor and was brushing his fingers delicately against the cool glass of the column.

"She," corrected the Doctor with a small smile. "Seems like she's taken a shine to you. She'll only let people touch her if she likes them."

Harry's smile widened: "She. Alright." He stroked the glass a little more. "She feels amused," he commented with a small chuckle.

Hermione cautiously drew near and put her hand next to Harry's, but all she felt was the cold glass, and a very faint, vague disapproval. She drew in a shuddering breath that sounded almost like a sob.

The Doctor told her kindly: "That's okay, culture shock. Happens to the best of us."

Rose slanted him a glare, but he didn't notice because Hermione was straightening herself to her full height and piercing him with a furious glare.

“I,” she enunciated very clearly, “have been informed at age eleven that the world I lived in was markedly bigger and more complex than I'd always believed and that I was, in a very definite way, different from anyone I'd ever met, including my own parents, and not only did I accept this, found my role in it all and learned how to fit in, but I was brilliant at it!”

“That she was,” nodded Harry fervently.

“Amazing, totally amazing,” beamed Ron, oddly proud.

“I _do not_ get culture shock!” she finished shrilly.

“Oh. Well. Good for you,” commented the Doctor, baffled once more.

Rose fought down a smirk and clapped her hands briskly to regain everybody's focus: "Right, well, anyway. Axos," she said pointedly. "Earth in need of saving - rings any bell?"

"Right!" exclaimed the Doctor. "Well, come on then. Let's have a look."

"A look at what?" asked Rose, arching an eyebrow with a challenging, expectant grin.

"I want to see if we can manage to neutralize the spaceship part of Axos. That’d solve our problem neatly."

"How would you even find it?" asked Hermione, a little acidly.

"By looking," replied the Doctor as if it was the most obvious thing ever. "We're currently orbiting high above Earth," he added matter-of-factly, "so it shouldn't be too difficult."

"Oh, that's wonderful! Come have a look, you three!" exclaimed Rose with a friendly smile, and threw the doors open.

This time, the three magic-users’ eyes widened in utter, undeniable shock.

Suspended in a vast sea of blackness, Earth gleamed like a blue and green marble streaked with ribbons of white, beautiful like a rare and luminous gem. Even having seen it time and again, Rose still found the full splendour of this sight an indescribable thrill and her face was alight with joy and wonder as she admired the golden edge of the sun-touched side of her planet.

Hermione was barely holding herself in check in her flabbergasted enthusiasm, gripping the door edge tightly to remind herself that she couldn't just run out and examine her planet closely as she wished. Harry's eyes were huge with shock and delight and Ron looked simply dumbfounded.

The Doctor smiled fondly. It was always gratifying to see this kind of reaction. Humans were often, in his opinion, among the most interesting sights the universe had to offer.

"Wow," breathed Harry, enthralled. "This surely beats studying Astronomy atop a tower!"

Everybody chuckled at this and turned from the view, albeit reluctantly.

"Right! Here we go," said the Doctor decisively, calling up result after result on his monitor. "The Tardis has some exquisitely sensitive detectors designed to reveal what would otherwise be hidden from our view. Now, if I reverse the polarity of their camouflaging field… I should be able to turn what's invisible into visible and perhaps also enable us to affect the spaceship portion of Axos... yes!"

He grinned proudly. "I'm brilliant," he informed the four humans – and gestured at the still open doors, outside which a smooth, golden-coloured ship had appeared, drifting lazily through space on more or less their same orbit around the planet. They admired it for a long moment, while the Doctor kept working on his various devices.

“If we can see it, won’t they be able to see us?” wondered Harry aloud.

“Chameleon circuit,” replied the Doctor distractedly. “The Tardis takes on the appearance of something that it would be normal to find in the spot she temporarily takes up. They won’t notice us.”

“I thought the chameleon circuit was broken?” asked Rose with a frown, at the same time as Hermione blurted out: "Then why does it look like a blue telephone box?"

The Doctor snapped: "I happen to like it! Anyway, we’re heavily shielded. Stop worrying."

They turned to him and noticed that he was sporting a frown and his eyes were scanning the screen in front of him almost frantically.

“What’s wrong?” asked Rose immediately, closing the doors and readying herself for whatever additional trouble the Doctor was apparently finding.

“No UNIT,” he muttered absentmindedly. “Not the slightest trace…” His frown deepened into a scowl.

“What do you mean?”

“There isn’t a single mention of UNIT to be found in any database on Earth. It’s like it never existed. And that… that’s impossible.” He kept staring at the screen as if he could force out some answers by will alone. “The only thing that could account for such a huge element of Earth history disappearing would be a major alteration in the past, sufficient to change the futures of all people involved with UNIT at any point rather drastically – including me. But if such a monumental shift in the timelines had occurred, I would have felt it!”

Keeping calm, Rose pointed out: “Could we be in a parallel universe again? Like that time with my not-dad and the Cybwermen?"

"No, no, no, that's not possible. A different universe would feel wrong. Remember how ill the Tardis was?”

His voice wavered the slightest bit and Rose winched, recalling how they’d thought her dead.

The three magic-users kept quiet, watching with wide eyes and hoping to make sense of things at one point or another, but sensing it wasn’t the time for questions.

The Doctor jumped up and started pacing frantically: “No, there is something strange here, but... Hold on. Wait wait wait. No. But maybe… no, no. But I should be able to sense more!...”

He wrung a hand through his dishevelled hair. “No UNIT, now that is strange. This whole situation is strange. In fact, I don't think I've ever found myself in a stranger situation - we-ell... I say never... there was that time with the--"

"Doctor, now's not the time for reminiscing!" said Rose, grabbing him by an arm. His attitude was starting to scare her just a bit. The Doctor wasn’t supposed to be confused.

"Right-o!" He smiled at her reassuringly, but his eyes were dark and worried still. Then his gaze strayed to the screen once more, unhappily: “Still, Rose, this situation is bewildering. I still have all my memories of my time with UNIT. Logically, they haven’t been rewritten, which means that UNIT exists. So how come it doesn’t?”

"Doctor!" interrupted Rose again, firmly. "Saving the Earth first. Puzzling out the situation can wait!"

He sighed explosively and grabbed her in a hug. “Ok,” he murmured, and then a little louder: “Ok.” He released her and went back to his pacing: “I was thinking of using my contacts in UNIT for this, but clearly, that’s out of the question, though why it is so, I cannot fathom. The flux of time around us is making no sense... but yeah, yeah. Later. That means, however, that we don't have the resources to fight Axos…”

“Wait, there’s no one else who could help?” interjected Hermione incredulously.

The Doctor paid her no mind: “So, no fighting. Which isn’t bad, all in all, except… Well, I suppose I could try and trap it in the time loop again, or for the first time, or whatever, but that really was a more risky mess than I’m comfortable with… and anyway it doesn't seem to have done much good. I wonder..."

"Doctor!" cried Hermione, faintly frustrated, but again, she was ignored.

The Doctor frowned at Rose: "I suppose the best way to do about things would be to persuade the Axos to leave."

The blond girl regarded him incredulously: "I know you can talk for England, Doctor, but do you really think it would listen?"

The Doctor grimaced. "If we could somehow trick it into thinking that the Earth isn't worth the effort after all..."

"How? 'Cause I've met very few aliens who weren't interested in marketing my planet, even if just as junk, like the Slitheens," said Rose.

"Slitheryns?” blurted out Ron, making everybody jump, since he’d remained remarkably quiet so far. “The Slytherins are aliens?! I should have bloody well known!”

“Oh, what nonsense, Ron!” exclaimed Hermione, exasperated, while Harry chortled in the background. "Sli-theens, and they don’t slither, and actually, Rose! That's a brilliant idea!"

"What?" asked the startled blonde.

"Blowing up the planet! Axos won't be interested in the remains, it's got axonite enough that burnt and torn pieces of Earth would be of no consequence to it."

His triumphant grin was met with an ominous silence. Finally, Rose asked very carefully: "Have you finally gone round the bend?"

The Doctor blinked, then realized what she’d probably misunderstood, and waved his arms frantically in the air, trying to convey his enthusiasm: "No, no, no, not for real! If we can trick the Axos' sensors into registering the Earth as gone... they'll move on to somewhere else!"

"Like a cloaking device.” Rose drew a relieved breath as she got it.

"Exactly!" The Doctor beamed maniacally, but she wasn’t sold: "And what about somewhere else?" she asked disapprovingly.

"We-eell...” A hand snaked up to run through his hair again, as his smile dimmed, then brightened again: “I can manipulate the ship interface and rig the controls so that the course heading will be somewhere in the constellation of Fornax. There's nothing there, just a barred-spiral nebula where life won't develop for another four billions years, give or take; it shouldn't be able to do much damage there, at least for a while."

And finally, Rose smiled as well: "Alright. Sounds like a plan. But how are we to trick it?"

“I can’t think of any charm that could obtain such an effect,” piped up Hermione, abruptly reminding the two of her presence.

"What if we combine more than one spell?" asked Harry unexpectedly. When everybody turned to him, he elaborated. "Well, the Disillusionment Charm could hide the real Earth... and then we could project something over it, with a different spell I mean, and the end result would be more or less the same as what you want."

The Doctor started slowly smiling and straightened up, watching them with interest.

"Hmm..." murmured Hermione. "That... should be doable. Bit tricky, but..."

"Disillusionment Charm?" asked Rose curiously, with a quick side glance at the unexpectedly silent Doctor.

"Yeah, it's a spell that can conceal whatever you cast it on. It's not that it makes you invisible, it just... makes you the exact colour and texture of whatever's behind you. Like a chameleon. The animal, not that circuit thingy of yours," Harry précised a little nervously.

"Brilliant!" was the Doctor's only comment.

"But how can we conceal an entire planet?" asked Ron. "That's... I mean, that's... that's... big," he finished weakly.

"Huge. Great. Colossal. Massive," nodded Rose, who'd clearly spent too much time with her Doctor in pinstripes.

"Astronomical," snickered Harry.

"Ooh... I like you!" beamed the Doctor, who always appreciated a good thesaurus as much as a bad pun.

"Actually, I think that's doable," intervened Hermione thoughtfully. "The Disillusionment Charm has an area of effect, rather than being tied to a specific magical core: that's why it can be cast on non-magical things or people too, with exactly the same effect. Extending this type of charm to a more voluminous target is certainly possible... just think of what they did to the stadium for the Quidditch World Cup! I know I studied the theory in Arithmancy... tweaking an existing spell just for size adjustment should be only a matter of ensuring that the numbers of the additional spellwords and of the original and end effect match magically.” She frowned: “Of course, the bigger the area to affect the more power is required... We might have to call some people for help, but..."

"Oh, we've got power, never you worry," said the Doctor with cheerful confidence. He was looking at them with a sort of amused delight, like an indulgent parent watching his children doing something clever. He had crossed his arms and legs, leaning back against the console, and seemed content to watch them happily and let them work it all out.

Hermione sighed: "Too bad we don't have the time for it. It’d be an amazing project."

"Oh?" The Doctor's eyebrows went up; he still looked rather amused.

Rose snickered: "Time Lord, him." She gave them an impish smile, tongue poking out of her teeth charmingly. "I think he can find you some time."

The Doctor chuckled; Hermione however shook her head: "But the calculations alone!... I don't think I can work out all the necessary equations in less than a few months, I'd have to review what I've already learned and study more... And even if we get an Artithmancy Master to help, considering the scale of the project and the number of variables and the unbelievable risk if anything goes wrong... It'll take weeks for sure!"

"Nonsense!" replied the Doctor cheerfully. "I'm very, very good with numbers. Just start on those equations and I'll get around to help you in a minute. You'll see, we'll have them sorted in no time."

Hermione gaped at him while he turned to Harry: "What..." - he grimaced - "what _spell_ , if you really want to call it that, did you have in mind for the illusionary projection?"

Harry blinked, surprised at being asked: "Err... well, usually it's Hermione who knows her spells best...” His green eyes darted to her friend and back rapidly. “But... I guess, something like a Pensieve memory?"

At the blank but inquisitive looks he received, he explained: "If you put memories into a Pensieve you can review them, sort them, stuff like that... and they can be viewed by someone else that wasn't there at the time, too.”

“Fascinating,” murmured the Doctor, who, indeed, looked definitely intrigued.

“Yeah, anyway… To put the memories in, you have to extract them first and I thought, maybe... maybe we could do that, and then instead of putting them in a Pensieve, which we don't have, we could... I don't know, send them." He waved his hand haphazardly. "To the spaceship, yeah?"

"Even disregarding the fact that you can't send memories, what memory do you think we could send?" snapped Hermione. "I don't know you, but I've never seen the Earth blow up!"

"I have," blurted out Rose, surprising everybody (except, of course, the Doctor). "I mean, I was there. Will be there. Err... five billions years in the future - the year 5.5/Apple/26. I saw the Earth go up in flames." And she launched into a halting description of the experience.

When the three magic-users managed to metaphorically collect their jaws from the floor, Harry raised his wand hesitantly: "So, are you alright with this? It doesn't hurt or anything," he hurriedly added. "It's just... strange."

Rose grinned: "I can do strange."

Harry smiled back.

Feeling rather proud of himself - learning those spells hadn't been easy - he held his wand up to her temple and coached her gently on releasing the memory. It was something he'd made a point to research after the War, conscious of how incredibly important Snape's last gesture had been - and on so many levels too; for the War, for him personally... And here was proof that he'd been right - memories saving the world once more.

The Doctor had his geeky glasses on again and was watching closely as the faintly luminescent strand of pearly white memory flew from Rose's head to the tip of Harry's wand and then, dethatching itself from the source, flailed in the air for a moment before being caught by the glass vial Hermione had thoughtfully produced.

"Never in all my lives..." he muttered under his breath, all his focus on the perlaceous, swirling fluid. "Amazing, simply amazing."

He rounded on Rose, peppering her with questions (firstly, to make sure she was alright; and secondly, to figure out the weird experience), then turned to Harry to do the same with him (except Harry had never been much one for theory, and his answers were less than satisfactory for the scholarly Doctor).

Reluctantly admitting that their plan for getting rid of Axos took precedence over his curiosity, the Doctor turned to Hermione: "Right! Let's see those equations!"

To Hermione's everlasting shock, the Doctor didn't seem to have any problem understanding the theory she was haltingly trying to convey (aided by his always spot on questions), despite not even believing in magic, let alone being familiar with the prerequisites of arithmantic-based spellcrafting; he was also, apparently, capable of juggling equations with an insane number of variables without breaking a sweat. She was torn between awe and disbelief watching him.

In no time at all, he'd taken her sketched out model equations and run them through several iterative calibration and verification steps, checking the results against the intended and predicted effect and easily adjusting them to ensure any magical incompatibility was countered – despite having only heard her explanation on matching power-numbers once – and identifying the parameters they needed to make this work.

"That's... that's amazing. You actually solved the whole spellcrafting design in less than twenty minutes!" she breathed, awed and incredulous.

"I told you I'm good."

"But you knew nothing of magic!"

" _Very_ good."

"Still one problem," pointed out Ron, from where he'd perched himself on one of the railings, waiting with usual patience for Hermione - and now the Doctor - to work out the bookworms' part. "The Disillusionment Charm works by touching the wand to the target. How are we going to touch a planet?"

"No, no, no, that's not the right question!" exclaimed the Doctor, bouncing towards the console to start inputting figures even as he talked. "See, your 'magic' is clearly a form of energy and energy can be channelled - granted it isn't easy, but since I'm very, very clever, I'll build a wireless energy transmitter adapted to precisely your form of energy to do it!”

“Wireless? What, like the radio?” asked Ron interestedly.

The Doctor scrunched his nose: “Not... quite. That's wireless telecommunication and all it needs to work is a signal sufficiently distinguishable from the background noise. What I'm going to do, is transmit energy from a power source – namely, your… ‘wands’, augmented by the Tardis’ own power field – to an electrical load – that’s the Axos sensors – without any artificial conductors.”

He caught the blank stares on the others’ faces and sighed: “It’s not like the radio. More like... microwave ovens or laser barcode scanners, except, I'm going to use electrical conduction through natural media - specifically, the magnetosphere surrounding Earth, where the outward magnetic pressure of the planet’s magnetic field is counterbalanced by the solar winds.”

More blank stares.

“Trust me, it’ll work!” said the Doctor curtly and finished inputting the arithmantic model into the Tardis’ computer.

"But magic is not electrical energy!” protested Hermione, who’d more or less followed the quick explanation. "In fact, they're quite incompatible - anything electrical short-circuits in heavily magical environments."

"Which is why I need to build the transmitter instead of using the one I already have," replied the Doctor cheerfully. "Although I suppose I should call it a converter/transmitter, since it'll do both at once... Convitter?" he tried, almost tasting the words. "Transverter? …Transconverter?"

"Err... If you say so."

“Meanwhile, come here and have fun,” said the Doctor resolutely and set them up with a few streaming channels and a video editing software, to patch together something resembling panic over a nuclear strike that they would feed the Axos because, as he pointed out, “Nobody would believe a planet could just be blown up without external interference if no-one on it had any clue about it.”

Despite being a little uncertain, the four humans did, indeed, have fun with the task, while their weird host threw himself into inventing the needed... ‘transverter’.

All too soon, the Doctor was lying underneath the console, cursing in a musical, incomprehensible language, with sonic tools and strange parts scattered around him, which Rose dutifully passed him when asked. Hermione and Ron took up monitoring the movie patchwork that would – hopefully – outwit the hostile alien. Harry reappeared after a while with mugs of tea for everybody, and just shrugged when his friends raised an eyebrow at him. The beautiful ship had nudged him towards the kitchen and he'd thought it was a good idea - that was all.

Once the Doctor was done, he bounced lightly to his feet and grinned widely. “Here we go! Now it's only a matter of rerouting your so-called ‘spells’ through the main deflector of the Axos' ship! Child’s play, really."

Hermione bit her lip, feeling her stomach knot tightly like during OWLs exams: “You sure this will work? What if I made a mistake? What if…?”

The Doctor paid her no mind: "Ready?"

Under the tense and excited eyes of four humans and a Time Lord, the amazing sight that was planet Earth from space wavered and vanished for a fraction of a second, before being replaced by the slow rush of flames Rose had witnessed so long ago in the future.

The Earth was burning.

The four humans remained on the Tardis doorstep, watching their planet's ultimate fate being played out like an all-too-realistic movie. The Doctor kept an eye on the awe-inspiring spectacle, while he carefully monitored the Tardis' sensors, adjusting the data transmission to ensure the Axos ship would be fooled, despite the numerous little inconsistencies of their projection, and ready to slip within its network security system at the first opportunity, to ensure it would go where he wanted it to.

Once the fire had engulfed the whole planet and flared brightly in the mimicry of a nucleus explosion, the smooth golden ship up and disappeared in a modest flash of white light, followed by the Doctor's triumphant cheering.

They let the memory of blazing rock fragments streaking through the void and towards the sun play out anyway.

"Well, I suppose that is that," said Harry at long last. "Hm. If you could take us back to Earth...?"

"I'm afraid that's out of the question," said the Doctor airily.


	6. It won't be quiet,

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose sighed. "Well, what does this all mean for us?" she asked, intrigued but confused.  
> The Doctor’s face split in a huge grin: "That magic is real!"

_"Well, I suppose that is that," said Harry at long last. "Hm. If you could take us back to Earth...?"_

_"I'm afraid that's out of the question," said the Doctor airily._

"Excuse me?!"

Three gaping faces stared at him in incredulous indignation - and even Rose raised a surprised eyebrow at him, though she didn't say anything.

The Doctor's countenance turned extremely serious: "We still have no idea who you are, what's happened to the timelines, what your so-called ‘magic’ is, how you managed to time travel at this point of your history and--"

“So what!” screeched Hermione.

"You can't just keep us prisoner indefinitely!" shouted Harry furiously.

"Of course not!” retorted the Doctor just as loudly. “I just want you to stay around until I figure out what's going on. And it's not a matter of ‘prisoners’, I’d say 'guests' more than anything - really, who do you take me for?" he protested sullenly.

The three magic-users’ expressions were growing stormy and it was clear that his words were doing little to calm their upset.

"Doctor?" intervened Rose, wishing to diffuse the situation. "I've been thinking and... I really think we're in a parallel universe. I mean, it's the only thing that makes sense. They do have magic, you've seen it...!"

Her attempt at changing the topic didn't work.

"We have things to do! People who'll miss us!" – “Who do you think you are!?” they thundered. "You have no right...!"

"Time machine!" the Doctor reminded them in a singsong voice. "I can take you back today in a few days, no-one will be the wiser."

"Can you, though?" asked Harry, sceptical and glaring. "I mean, the 'space' part of it has been definitely proven, but Hermione said time travel is impossible and..."

The witch, however, shook her head fervently: "After the way he manipulated that arithmantic model, _and_ integrated magic with his technology, I believe he can do anything at all!"

Rose wasn't surprised in the least to see the smug look that admission put on the Doctor's face. "You think you're so impressive," she murmured fondly.

"I am so impressive!" came the familiar retort.

"Well, fine," allowed Harry, still glaring. "But that doesn't mean I wish to be kidnapped!"

“I’m not kidnapping you!” objected the Doctor, looking offended.

"He's right," clamoured Ron at the same time, with a forbidding glower. "Take. Us. Back."

"Soon," promised the Doctor. "Just as soon as--"

“And how is that not kidnapping us?!” demanded Hermione shrilly.

Quickly, Rose stepped in again: "Look, you're right, I get you. I do," she insisted, raising her palms in a pleading gesture. "And if you really, truly want it, we'll get you back right now."

"Good!" the three exclaimed, even as the Doctor protested: "Rose!"

"But!" she said, raising her voice slightly. "Think about it, first, ok? Just... think of the possibilities. It's not kidnapping - I promise; it's... think of it as an opportunity, eh? All of time and space... If you stay, and help us figure this out, the Doctor'll take you on a trip. Wherever you want. Won't you?" she turned a meaningful gaze on the Time Lord.

"Ah!" the Doctor almost took a step back from her stare, wide-eyed. "Ah, well, that is, um... yes! Sure! Yes!" he said quickly. "A trip, of course, no problem." Rapidly thinking it over, he realized that this way of going about things was much, much better than his own. He smiled proudly at Rose.

The sudden silence sounded loud, as the three magic-users gaped.

Finally Ron asked derisively: "What makes you think we want this?"

It was clear, though, that Harry at least was tempted - and Hermione wasn't far behind.

"Wherever we want?" she asked suspiciously.

"Wherever or _when_ ever," the Doctor piled it on.

She bit her lip, torn, even as Harry mumbled something along the lines of: "... Well, maybe we could, you know, just... just for a while..."

Ron turned to gawk at his best friends. Then he closed his mouth with an audible snap. “Fine,” he sighed. “Fine! I reckon you're mad, the pair of you, but if you really want to go looking for trouble--”

“I don’t go looking for trouble!” protested Harry automatically, making Hermione quirk a small smile.

“--then fine – I’m with you,” concluded Ron with a long-suffering glare.

Hermione hugged him weakly and Harry grinned sheepishly.

“Molto Bene!” exclaimed the Doctor delightedly and twirled around to send them off into the Vortex.

“Aw. Don’t be like that,” Rose told a gloomy Ron with a friendly smile. “Trouble's just the bits-in-between, you know. Out there… there’s so much to see – new worlds and incredible creatures and impossible things! It’s great!”

In spite of himself, Ron smiled back. “So long as you’re planning to feed us,” he grumbled good-naturedly. “I’ve had nothing but tea all day long. I’m starving!”

They laughed companionably and Rose took it upon herself to arrange a light dinner, with Harry’s help, while the Doctor and a thoroughly fascinated Hermione started debating the nature of magic – and of time-travel.

Mostly, though, the Doctor was circling the issues of UNIT’s absence and magic’s presence, worrying at the matter through his own, growing unease. He just wasn’t used to _not knowing_. It didn’t sit well with him.

Rose, only distractedly keeping track of the discussion, steadfastly maintained her opinion that they'd slipped into a parallel universe: "Not like it hasn't happened before, Doctor!" she insisted stubbornly.

"Yes, yes, but if you recall, we rather noticed!" retorted the Doctor. “While here – now – I’m not noticing anything. And that’s…”

“Impossible?” Rose rolled her eyes.

“Unnerving.”

"Parallel worlds…" mused Hermione, absently swirling the glass in her hand (the contents of which she’d discreetly transfigured into pumpkin juice). “I think I've read something of the sort. Everett's Many-Worlds Interpretation, 1947 or something like that.”

“1954,” corrected the Doctor in a negligent tone.

Hermione frowned and thought it over: “No, I’m pretty sure it was 1947,” she said stiffly.

The Doctor smirked but before he could said anything, Harry rolled his eyes: “Does it matter?”

“Yeah, tell us what it’s all about, instead,” agreed Ron from where he was perusing the Sixties-style fridge (and also its contents).

Primly, Hermione recited: “Every single decision you make creates a parallel existence, a different dimension where things continue differently because of that single difference.”

"Pretty much sums it up,” nodded the Doctor.

The two wizards thought it over.

“That’s ridiculous,” declared Harry after a moment. “It’s like saying that choices don’t exist.”

The Doctor frowned, baffled by the comment: “Of course they exist. That’s precisely how alternate universes are created!”

“No, but,” insisted Harry. “It’s like, when Voldemort gave me the choice of joining him… I did the right thing and told him to go to hell, right? Only you’re saying I also didn’t.”

“Voldemort?” snorted Rose, on the verge of guffawing. “That a real name?”

She placed a bowl of steaming spaghetti in a pesto sauce on the table, while Harry threw her a grin and finished setting the cutlery.

The Doctor scooped some spaghetti on his dish and added fresh banana roundels that he’d carelessly cut up on top. “Well, see, in a different universe…” he started, then trailed off at the vaguely horrified look Hermione was giving him. “What?”

He followed her gaze down to the bananas he was mixing into the green pasta, then looked up again. “Bananas are good!” he cried in mock-outrage.

She shuddered.

“But it was still me!” blurted out Harry, ignoring the food-related exchange entirely. “Same life up until that point, right? Same character, same morals…?”

“…Yeah?” said the Doctor leadingly.

“Well, that means I didn’t really have a choice, did I? It’s just dumb luck that I’m the me who turned him down and not the me who went off to be a Dark Wanker with him.”

The Doctor paused with a bite of pesto-and-bananas half-way to his mouth.

Harry glowered mulishly at his own spaghetti al pesto (without bananas). “That’s… that’s horrible. What’s the point of it all, if we don’t get to choose because anyway all the possible outcomes of a choice play out in a bloody universe somewhere?”

“Wow. Bit of a philosopher, aren’t you?” wondered the Doctor with a small smile. “Anyway, it’s not like that. Decohesion happens for each possible _outcome_. That means that the choice is made, and its consequences are the sources of the splits. So, as I was saying, in a different universe you might have been killed for your choice. Or, the man in question might have asked again – become more persuasive, I don’t know. That would prompt another choice, upon which you might have stuck to your morals, or been convinced, or…”

“Err… decohesion?” asked Rose as she took her place.

“The instantaneous process by which the world splits into a copy of itself for each possible outcome to an action,” was the prompt explanation.

She didn’t look any less lost, but Hermione interrupted: “But Everett’s theory says that every decision is a point of origin for different universes!”

“No, no, no,” retorted the Doctor. “It says that if an action has more than one possible outcome, the universe splits _when that action is taken_.”

“What if the action is not taken?” asked Harry, still scowling.

“Oh, Harry,” said Hermione a bit dismissively. “That is also ‘taking an action’ – only in the negative. Sort of like adding zero to a number: it’s still a sum, isn’t it?”

“…Not really.”

“That’s why I liked his terminology better,” the Doctor said with a nod towards Harry. “You don’t ‘take an action’, per se; you make a choice; which, yes, is put into effect by actions. And the outcomes of the choice...”

“…create the splits,” concluded Rose. “Oi, this actually kind of makes sense!”

Harry thought it over a little longer. “That means... Ok, well, but suppose you found yourself in a life-or-death situation: then if you’re alive here, that means that in a parallel universe, you are dead?”

The Doctor looked at him strangely: “You’re a barrel of laughs, aren’t you?”

“You’ve just told me that I’ve died a number of times!” protested Harry with the kind of gallows humour Sybil Trelawney had taught him. “I think I’m allowed to find this a bit disturbing.” He had an amused glint in his eyes.

Rose, too, was giving him a weird look, but Ron and Hermione had grown used to his whimsical joking after the war and didn’t bat an eye.

Anyway, the red-head was busy contemplating his loaded fork, perplexed. “So…” he tried with a little hesitation. “There’s a world being born for every moment I think about eating this but choose to wait instead?” He grimaced doubtfully. “Awful lot of worlds crowding up the space, then. Where do they all fit?”

Harry snickered at the image of irritated, bubble-like worlds elbowing each other aside that Ron had evoked.

The Doctor rolled his eyes almost fondly: “Well, I can see where you might believe that, but no. Definitely not. You eating your spaghetti or not is not a choice important enough to warrant the creation of an alternate timeline… much less a parallel universe.”

“Why not? Who are you to say if a choice is important or not?...” challenged Hermione, belligerently.

“I’m a Time Lord,” replied the Doctor pointedly.

Rose snorted a laugh at his typical arrogance, seeing that it was doing nothing but fluster and irritate their brown-haired guest.

With an overly-dramatic, long-suffering sigh, the Doctor explained: “Time’s in flux. Well, mostly, but still. At any given instant, everything is possible. Everything can happen. Infinite options. Infinite varieties. A fuzzy bunch of timelines spiralling off from any point, wavering around stability without reaching it, fluttering through ever-shifting probabilities. And I can see it,” he went on with growing enthusiasm. “Because I see the timelines – all the bunch of potentialities stemming from a person, a place, an action – and I see when and how a certain choice, big or small, affects them.”

He balanced himself on two legs of the chair and went on: “Sometimes a choice makes the potential timelines waver a little, vibrate around a small set of possibilities that still maintain the same general direction – but the way to get there can be better or worse depending on that choice. That’s when I usually step in, give things a nudge in the right direction.” He winked at Rose.

“Other times, a certain choice, big or small, is in fact so pivotal that it leads to completely different timelines. Judging the possibility, and even more, the opportunity, for intervention in such cases is a lot more delicate, and in general, more important.”

He paused only for a moment. “That’s the difference between a Time Lord and a human, you see. You lot, you can’t tell. I can. I can always tell whether a choice is relevant to the establishing of stable timelines or not.”

“Always?” repeated Harry, trying to imagine what it might be like to ‘see’ time like the Doctor was describing (and not quite managing).

Suddenly, the Time Lord grinned: “Oh, yes! Be it someone being born who wasn't supposed to, the assassination of a monarch… or picking strawberry instead of raspberry jam.”

Rose snorted and when he turned to her in mock-indignation, she giggled.

“Rose Tyler, I’ll have you know that I’m perfectly serious! Jam choosing can be a very important business,” said the Doctor earnestly.

When she raised an eyebrow in challenge, he didn’t disappoint: “Serenity Lailon, human, born in the 62nd century. She’d never tasted strawberries before, they didn’t grow on her home planet. Tasting the strawberry jam instead of the familiar raspberry one inspired her – she set off into deep space on a recycled pick-up spaceship cobbled together by her brother, became the greatest explorer of her century, discovered no less than 347 between planets and asteroids, including the europium mines on Astra that financed all her other explorations, and traced stable routes enabling colonization of the previously unknown Delta Quadrant. All because she tried strawberry jam. Imagine if she hadn’t!” He grinned.

“On the other hand, Winston Churchill once had to choose between orange and blueberry jam – I was there, you know – and nothing whatsoever changed because of his eventual decision.”

Laughing, Rose got up and got some ice-cream out as dessert, which perked the Doctor right up: “Oh, I didn’t know we had any left!” he cheered, fishing a spoon from one of his amazing pockets.

Hermione wasn’t one to let things lie, however. “But _how_ can you tell?” she insisted sceptically. “It makes no sense that you would be able to recognize something based on its consequences when it happens before its consequences.”

“Well, if I couldn’t, how could I go around changing things?” pouted the Doctor, whose attention was now dedicated to his bowl of strawberry ice-cream more than to the discussion. “Meddling with the past is extremely dangerous, as you should know,” he shook his spoon at her to underline those few admonishing words. “Paradoxes and infinity loops and whatnot. Imagine if I stumbled upon a fixed point and didn’t know it! I might try and change it – forget blowing up the universe: that would unravel time itself.”

“What’s a fixed point?” asked Ron, who found himself surprisingly interested.

The Doctor sighed, determinedly finishing his ice-cream in silence, then spotted the expectant looks on his guests’ faces and sighed again, looking to the ceiling as if hoping for inspiration. Explaining this kind of things to non-Time Lords was, in general, a complete waste of time (not least because few languages besides Gallifreyan had the necessary words to shape such concepts), but for some reason he caught himself trying every time.

“From the inside,” he started slowly, “a choice-moment in time is always an infinity that will solidify into a reality through actualization… but whether that reality is interchangeable with a better or worse one, or whether an alternate resolution is so incompatible that it will require an entirely different universe to pan out, that depends on the nature of the moment in the fabric of time.”

There was a baffled silence, dotted with a couple, mystified: “...What?”

“You lot... You’re stuck on the idea that time is linear, when actually, from a non-subjective viewpoint... oh, never mind.” The Doctor ran a hand through his hair. “You – meaning humans; you tend to think that something which happens as a consequence of something else isn’t real until its cause comes to pass, because you believe consequences always follow causes linearly, while in reality, one of the first rules of Time is that causality isn’t necessarily linear at all and shouldn’t be confused with sequentiality.”

Rose’s gaze was a little glazed, but she was dutifully listening anyway, chin resting on one of her hands; he found it just a little bit adorable.

“If you could,” he went on, “see the entire myriad of potential timelines surrounding a person, like I can, you’d know this immediately because in each of those timelines, the particular consequences that shape it are real. Of course, seeing the timelines means little if you don’t know how to interpret them. It is a matter of being able to tell whether a moment, while pivotal, will nevertheless actuate a path utterly equivalent to any other except for minor details, well, I say minor, that’s minor in the grand scheme of things, at least, but the point is, it will maintain reality unified, only changing the superficial level of how it is perceived; in which case I can nudge things towards the timeline I prefer...” he winked at Rose, who grinned back, amused.

The three wizard’s attention was riveted on him.

“Sometimes...” he sobered slightly. “Sometimes there will be no timeline that doesn’t pass through exactly a particular set of events and consequences. And it will be because of a single moment. That? That single moment? That tiny moment. _That’s_ a fixed point. The moment in which an individual makes a decision that cuts off all the options in the universe. The infinity is gone – and we have a fixed point in time, never to be rewritten.”

He paused for a moment.

“That’s what a Time Lord knows, what I’ve been trained to recognize. The relevance – or irrelevance, as the case maybe – of a choice.”

He could see they didn’t really get it, but they were interested anyway. It depressed and made him smile at once and he shook his head to clear it, shying away from what it might mean – as usual unwilling to face anything resembling introspection.

“And you can... see these fixed points?” asked Harry a little uncertainly, but gamely.

“Yes. Well... ‘seeing’ is not the proper verb, perhaps... but. Yes.”

“But how?” insisted Hermione, almost petulantly.

The Doctor shook his head impatiently: “Just accept that I can, alright? For me, it’s just a matter of focus. Mind you, it can give me the mother of all headaches…”

“I can’t ‘just accept’ something!”

“Why not?” grumbled Harry. “You accept magic works like books tell you it does all the time.”

She shot him a venomous look. Ron snickered.

The Doctor sighed again, feeling unaccountably tired and very, very lonely. “Part of it is training, as I said,” he volunteered.

“Can we learn to, then?” whispered Hermione, clearly fascinated.

“Not without timesenses.” The Doctor shook his head, ignoring her crushed expression.

Rose, on the other hand, was looking at him pensively, somewhat troubled; but when she caught his eyes, she smiled cheekily: “So when we go around doing our saving-the-world bit, we’re changing only minor things?”

“Rose Tyler, there is nothing minor to what we do!” he protested, a little cheered by her brightness.

She raised an eyebrow at him meaningfully.

“We-ell… sometimes it’s more about fixing the damage someone else has done to the timelines because they have no clue what they’re on about,” he allowed.

She snorted.

“But when we just meddle out of the goodness of our hearts… yes, basically. Still, a superficial reality _without_ an evil dictator murdering people left and right must be better than one _with_ him, right? Worth the effort and all that?”

Rose smiled freely: “Sure.”

“So that’s what you do? Go around making people’s lives better?” asked Harry, curious and amazed and not a little envious.

"But the kind of meddling you’re talking about is impossible,” complained Hermione, who was feeling pettily grumpy. “For one, you’d be part of the events from the moment you interfered, which means you’ve always been part of the events. So you wouldn’t be meddling. Just playing your part.”

“Bit of a know-it-all, aren't you?” commented the Doctor, amused.

Hermione scowled ferociously. “And wouldn’t you change the outcome of an event simply by observing it?”

Now it was the Doctor’s turn to scowl: “Heisenberg was an idiot. And rude to boot. Don’t listen to him. If observing were enough to meddle my entire culture would never have developed…”

“Are you seriously accusing someone else of being rude?” asked Rose, laughter in her voice.

“Well, he was prone to gloat,” pouted the Doctor. “We went for a nice, long walk one evening, having a discussion about stuff, and you wouldn’t believe the nonsense he insisted on feeding me!”

Harry however had tuned out the latest tangent while he polished off his ice-cream, because a different – _wonderful, terrifying, exhilarating_ – thought had struck him. He went over it a few times and then asked aloud, an audible wave of longing in his voice: “Wait, wait. Back up a bit. These parallel universes. You can move from one to the other?"

The Doctor glanced at him and then suddenly glared, but it was tempered by a well of sad understanding and compassion: "I know what you're thinking and the answer is, absolutely NOT! You can't try and find a world where your loved ones didn't die or where something horrible didn't happen. Just... no.”

Harry scowled, obviously torn between feeling guilty and defiant.

"I understand. Really, I do," said Rose with gentle compassion. "When we stumbled upon that parallel world and I found out my father was still alive… well, I couldn’t let it go. I had to know – to meet him. And… in the end, it wasn’t a good idea.”

“Gingerbread houses!” cried the Doctor with a pout.

Hermione and Ron looked at him weirdly.

"But you did meet him! So it is possible to cross worlds!" crowed Harry in triumph.

But the Doctor shook his head: "Not anymore. Used to be easy. When the Time Lords kept their eye on everything, you could hop between realities, home in time for tea. Then they died, took it all with them. The walls of reality closed, the worlds were sealed. Not anymore.”

His voice had grown sad and burdened, but Harry refused to notice: “But you just said you did!”

The Doctor ran a hand through his hair tiredly: “When we did it... well, it was an accident. I still have no idea what happened. We fell out of the Time Vortex, through the Void...”

"The Void?" interrupted Hermione.

The Doctor grimaced: "The Void is... nothingness. Nowhere. Some sort of no-place, a silent realm, a lost dimension..."

“But…!” insisted Harry – only to be stopped by Ron’s hand squeezing his arm in warning.

The red-head, having relished his meal with gusto, leaned back in his chair and looked straight at the Doctor, but without releasing his best friend: “Ok, look. I don’t think this is getting us anywhere. So there are parallel universes, fine. So what?” he asked. “ ‘Cause you said this _isn’t_ a parallel universe, if I remember right. And aren’t you supposed to figure out all those questions you think are so important? So that we can go home?”

Harry and Hermione both glared at him, but he stared back defiantly. The only parallel universe he might be interested in would be one where Fred didn’t… - but he knew better than to expect the price to pay wouldn’t be worse. Magic taught you soon that the dead can’t come back – and if you try and violate that rule, the consequences are harsh. Could he accept to see Ginny dead instead? Or his Mum? Or… No, he wouldn’t think about it. That way lay madness.

“Good point,” allowed the Doctor. He frowned, having worked through the problem all the while, and not liking the uncertainty of his conclusions one bit.

“You really have no idea?” asked Rose, a little surprised.

The Doctor gazed at her unfathomably: “Oh, I have plenty of ideas. Heaps and loads. I am a veritable fountains of ideas, Rose Tyler. The only problem is that all of them are impossible.” He grimaced, then looked up at the ceiling again, thoughtful. “Unless...”

“Well?” demanded Hermione loudly.

“Unless they weren’t just parallels,” the Doctor muttered, gaze distant. “That… that might actually explain…” He frowned some more.

“Doctor?...” tried Rose after a while, a gentle hand on his arm.

He focused on her, but his mind was very clearly still miles away: “I need to check… Oh, it’s probably ridiculous… but then again…”

Abruptly, he got up from the table and strode over to the nearest door. Very obligingly, the Tardis let it open directly into the library.

“Now, where did I put that book, I wonder?” he mused aloud.

The other four scrambled to follow him and stopped abruptly just past the threshold, except Rose who was familiar with the place.

"Oh, my!" gasped Hermione in shocked wonder.

Literally thousands of books were gathered in the impressive, rectangular room with a flat ceiling lost in shadows far above their heads. Several geometrically regular storeys ran all around the perimeter, harmoniously articulated into wide niches by slender pillars and arches and furnished from floor to ceiling with shelving filled with books: they looked down to the room the five of them were in through thin, convoluted balustrades.

Brass ladders provided access to these upper levels, and there was an actual spiral staircase in a far corner, with a sculptured railing as delicately graceful as a lace. The floor under their feet was warm, dark and wooden and the walls were smoothly plastered and decorated with flowery frescos, which, along with the cosy-looking couches and armchairs arranged here and there in small circles around low tables, countered the grandiose, classical rigor of the room's proportions and broke its symmetry pleasantly, making it more welcoming.

Almost as if in a trance, Hermione moved slowly along the nearest shelves, eyes wide at the variety of alphabets and languages, careful fingers stroking the spines lightly as she went.

"This is bigger than the Hogwarts Library!" she whispered in disbelief.

"Blimey. How do you find anything in here without magic?" asked Ron, for once seriously impressed.

"I have a fantastic memory," bragged the Doctor.

"That, and the Tardis uses her Telepathic Circuits and - what was it you called it? Architectural Configuration Program? - to help us find whatever we're looking for," said Rose, throwing an amused look at her favourite alien. The Doctor's mock-pout just made her laugh.

While the newcomers looked around in awe, he disappeared through the shelving and quickly came out again with a couple of volumes filled with rows and rows of the complicated swirling lines the monitor of the Tarids provided, which Rose had learned to recognize as Gallifreyian.

A moment later, Hermione was approaching him, questions on the tip of her tongue – although she was much less confrontational and much more respectful than earlier. The sight of so many books seemed to have changed her opinion of the Doctor quite thoroughly.

For his part, he was skimming through the books at high speed, the black-rimmed specs once more perched on his nose.

"Oh, I'm too tired to pour through books!" moaned Ron.

He drudged himself to a small loveseat ensconced between two tall shelving units and dragged it out with a powerful pull. Distractedly, he waved his wand over it, transfiguring it into a squishy, worn-out and familiar copy of his mother's sofa, only in orange instead of brown, throwing himself on it with a happy sigh.

A moment later, he squeaked as he was unceremoniously dumped on the floor, his sofa having inexplicably disappeared.

Frowning and muttering to himself - because it wasn't exactly unheard-of for his transfigurations to fail, but wouldn't it have reverted to the original shape instead of vanishing? - Ron tried again, carefully conjuring the longed-for sofa out of thin air. He sat on it gingerly, bouncing a little to check its degree of reality, then grinned in satisfaction and threw himself back on it... and yelped loudly when he landed on the floor again.

He stood, glaring murderously at the spot where no trace of his conjuration remained. Just what was going on?

After a long moment, the original loveseat morphed into existence, sort of slowly growing from the very wall and then dethatching itself with a soft pop.

Ron gaped, completely stunned. What kind of magic was that?

A chuckle came from behind him. The Doctor was there, glasses still perched on his nose and a book open in his hands. "The Tardis is rather miffed that you not only dislike her furniture, but took it upon yourself to change it," he explained, still chuckling. "She also has a very poor opinion of your taste."

"What!?" Ron gaped at him, then rounded on the loveseat, offended: "That's my mum's sofa you're disparaging, you... you ship!"

He brandished his wand and went about changing the loveseat again, slashing through the movements with a vengeance. As soon as he'd completed the transfiguration, he added a ward around it.

The Tardis wavered for a moment, irritated that she couldn't get to the horrid sofa anymore, then promptly moved the whole warded bubble to a faraway storage room, effectively wiping out Ron's smug smirk.

The Doctor chuckled again: "I'll leave you to your quarrel, then, shall I?"

Ron ignored him. "This is war!" he grumbled in mid-voice, eyes narrowed at the vacant spot where 'his' sofa had been. He rolled up his sleeves and set to work.

The Doctor sent an affectionate thought at his ship, conveying his full confidence that she could handle the boy, and left them to it.

Given Ron’s preoccupation with struggling over molecular rearrangements with a ship both smarter and more stubborn than him, and the Doctor’s and Hermione’s fervent descent in their own private world of research (Hermione’s star-struck eyes were proof enough that her opinion of the Doctor was steadily rising), Rose and Harry rather naturally gravitated together.

And found, to their surprise, that they had a lot in common.

Even among wizards, there weren’t many who could relate to experiences such as being turned to stone (even if for Harry, it was an indirect understanding), being thrown into a tournament (or TV game, as it were) against their will, or meeting their dead father... sort of. On the other hand, Harry had never even conceived something like the Daleks; while Rose, for her part, had no familiarity with Acromantulas (not that she minded: they sounded horrid).

They chatted amiably, trading outrageous – but surprisingly, strictly true – stories of their past adventures and discussing matters such as floo powder versus time windows in firecalls and the possibility of goblins being related to the cynrog, dark green aliens with wrinkled and ridged skin, greasy hair and pug-like noses. The discussion about werewolves was particularly lively (and for all that Harry was a staunch supporter of their rights, he had to concede to Rose that being chased by a fully transformed one was terrifying).

All in all, they were rather having a grand time of it.

Harry felt more accepted by this odd blonde girl than from 90% of his former schoolmates and was thrilled to meet someone who promised to be as good a friend as Luna. As for Rose, despite her Mum’s and Mickey’s loving support, she didn’t really have someone with whom she could discuss the amazing, but sometimes terrifying, things she saw and did (not without the risk of facing another round of ‘come back home, that alien is too dangerous’). She was delighted: it was almost like having Jack back, only without all the flirting and innuendos.

However, it wasn't long before Rose's yawning started getting conspicuous – and contagious – and once he noticed, the Doctor was adamant in sending them all to bed - heedless of Hermione's loud pleading (and gushing about his books).

"None of that, now. Humans need sleep - in fact, you waste away a third of your lives sleeping. A true pity, that, but I know better than to keep you lot up - you'll end up growling and intractable, or muzzy and stupid."

"Thanks a bunch," muttered Harry.

"Come on," said Rose, gesturing towards the double doors. "I'll help you find rooms."

It didn't take them long to find a corridor leading to a wooden door with a rampant lion engraved at eye level. Inside, they found a cosy circular room decorated with scarlet tapestries, with a merry fire in a large fireplace, three squashy armchairs around it and a rather unexpected bulletin board hanging on the wall.

"This looks like the Gryffindor Common Room!" exclaimed Harry in surprised delight.

"I think those might lead to your rooms," said Rose, indicating the three wooden doors scattered around the room. "I'll leave you to settle in, shall I?"

"Awesome," declared Harry happily, while Hermione went off in her own little world, speculating aloud about telepathic ships, rooms of requirements and the nature of magic in general, and Ron sulked at how the welcoming armchair he tried to sit on turned into an uncomfortable, wooden chair under him.

Rose hovered for a moment, torn between sympathy and amusement. "If I were you, I'd try apologizing," she advised the red-head, fighting down a grin.

Glaring stubbornly, he tried instead to transfigure some sort of upholstery onto the straight back. Rose left him to his probably doomed efforts, shaking her head.

The morning after, Harry met Rose in the corridor outside his room and they made their way to the kitchen together, only for her to stop abruptly in the doorway.

"What are you doing to the toaster?" she asked suspiciously.

The Doctor looked up with a deer-in-headlights expression, frozen with the sonic screwdriver in a very compromising position over the metal entrails of the poor kitchen appliance.

Rose gave in with a long-suffering sigh: "Just so long as it isn't anything explosion-related." And she busied herself with making tea.

The Doctor shot an apologetic look at Harry.

"Nah, don't worry," said the wizard easily. "I've grown up with Seamus ‘I'll-manage-rum-someday’ Finnigan. Explosions at the breakfast table are nothing new to me."

The Doctor chuckled.

Ron appeared next, looking rather dishevelled and muttering angrily about cold showers and lights turning on and off the whole night. He dropped into a chair and didn’t even return the Doctor’s amiable “Hello!”

Judging by Ron's dark scowl and the murderous way he glowered at his bright pink table set, his competition over furniture with the Tardis was still in full swing. Wisely, Harry didn't comment.

“So how’s your research going?” asked Rose when everybody’s breakfast was over.

“Oh, I figured it all out!” exclaimed the Doctor exuberantly.

“What?!” screeched the newly arrived Hermione, startling them all. “What do you mean you figured it out!? What is it, then? Why didn’t you wait for me? I could have helped! What have you concluded? What...?”

The frantic questions were muffled by Ron’s hand, which turned Hermione’s energy to glaring furiously at him; unfazed, he gave his girlfriend a long-suffering smile and then kissed her soundly. “Give the man a break, love,” he muttered affectionately into her lips.

Huffing, but calmer, Hermione turned to offer everybody a sheepish good-morning, then zeroed expectantly on the Doctor, sitting close to him and almost quivering with excited interest. His automatic protest that there was no such thing as a morning on the Tardis died in the face of her zeal. She even produced a pen and a small notebook and kept it at the ready, like a schoolgirl anxious to make her teacher proud. A far cry from the day before, when she had scowled and glared and kept her arms crossed in front of her like an armour against the Doctor's maniacal attitude! Now she was clearly entranced, hanging on his every word, stars in her eyes.

Harry chuckled and pushed a cup of tea into her nearest hand, while Ron sneaked a couple of jam-covered bagels on her plate, rolling his eyes fondly.

The Doctor cleared his throat, feeling the slightest bit self-conscious. “Yes, right. Well. A-hem. I’ve reviewed all the theory from back in the day, and everything you’ve told me about the history of your world and the theory of your magic, and I’ve come to a conclusion,” said the Doctor, catching everybody’s attention.

“So was I right?” asked Rose teasingly. “Are we in a parallel universe?”

"I think," he said slowly and deliberately, as if he was tasting his hypothesis as he said it aloud, "that the term 'parallel' might be misguiding in this instance. I think we might be closer if we say we're in a 'divergent' universe."

There was a pause.

"Err... and the difference is?" asked Rose, not very impressed.

"What keeps two universes in parallel is the existence across them of certain fixed points in time. By which I mean, that some unalterable events occur in every parallel universe as fixed points in time, effectively ‘locking’ those universes in parallel.”

He massaged his chin with one hand, thoughtfully. “The original speculation was that such binding events would happen across every ‘near’ continuity similar to our own, thus preventing anyone or anything belonging to that reality from reaching across to our universe easily. That was proven false when a Time Lady known as the Developer elaborated a theory which instead used such transversal fixed points as… bridges, if you will. Thus allowing cross-dimensional travel, under carefully monitored circumstances of course, even to ‘mirror universes’ – those parallel universes where the patterns of events move in indistinguishable manners but the intentions and characterizations are different.”

“Now, this…” he showed them a thick book with a rich, ornate cover. “This is one of the basic texts about temporal physics. _The Elegance of Time_.” He grimaced. “I hated it when I was a student – we all did – but there’s no denying that it is thorough. Rodageitmutaldeitaliulvesorghackar was one of the most revered philosophers during my time at the Academy… all of his writings were mandatory – and believe me, he wrote a lot. Loved to put circles to paper, that one.”

“…Was that really a name?” asked Rose, sounding fascinated.

“Part of it,” said the Doctor shortly. “No-one’d use an _actual_ name in public.”

Rose started: “What? Why?”

“Never mind that!” he cut her short. “The point is, if a parallel world grows distant enough from the original source universe the bridging fixed points are no longer shared and the evolution of timelines grows too different for comparisons. That’s why the Tardis isn’t affected! This universe is so different that it can _coexist_ with ours. No drain on her energy! Though she won’t be able to recharge either – which is bad.”

“Not petrol in a diesel engine?” tried Rose, sounding uncertain.

“No, no... more like water, I’d say. But water in a diesel engine can be just as dangerous!” lectured the Doctor. “It can cause the fuel injector tips to explode, cause sudden cooling in the engine, excessive injector wear, filter plugging, power loss, corrosion – all sorts of problems! It generally result in shortened engine life. Not good.” He pouted for a brief moment. “On the other hand... the Tardis isn’t really a diesel engine, is she? Not even close. She won’t be harmed, in fact, she won’t be anything – it’s like drinking only water, not harmful, rather the opposite, but in the long run, you’d starve.”

“Wait. What did this Rodag-… Rodaigmu-…” Hermione stumbled over the unfamiliar collection of syllables of the intricate name.

The Doctor rolled his eyes: “Just call him the Theorist. It’s the name he chose for himself. Simpler that way.”

“…Right,” agreed Hermione uncertainly. “Anyway, what did he mean by ‘parallels growing distant’? Two parallel lines are always equidistant at all points!... By definition!”

“Not in multidimensional geometry,” replied the Doctor cheerfully. “Besides, this is ‘parallel’ as in ‘having the same direction, course, or nature’ rather than ‘parallel’ as ‘never converging or diverging’.”

“Aren’t all parallel worlds diverging, though? They start off at one common point and go on in different ways. Like with zeppelins instead of planes,” said Rose, frowning in concentration.

“Well, yes, in a way – good point, actually!” he beamed. “Only, with parallel universes it’s more or less like a controlled-access highway. You can have lanes with different traffic composition, but all going in the same direction. You can even go at different speeds on different lanes, resulting in time differentials between the parallels; but you’ll get to the same toll booths – the fixed points.”

Rose looked unsure. “What does that mean for where we are now?”

“Ah, that!” said the Doctor happily, then immediately corrected himself: “No, no. The freeway metaphor won’t work for this. See, the fact is that the split between our source universe and this one happened centuries ago! A whole new world, Rose, not just with a different history: with different _rules_!”

Fighting not to be swept up in his contagious enthusiasm, Rose pointed out: “It looked pretty much like ours, though. Not even zeppelins in the sky.”

“Oh, Rose Tyler, their split was of such a magnitude that the Hindenburg disaster of 1937 simply cannot compare!” told her the Doctor. “In fact, if we’d stayed around enough to, say, visit a museum, we’d have found some interesting surprises. Such as... that their history was rather dramatically different--” he paused for a second, dramatically: “until 1692!”

“The Statute of Secrecy!” cried Hermione, getting it faster than anybody else.

“Precisely! Hiding away not only the existence, but also most _memories_ of the split, it sort of... kind of... reversed the divergence, so to speak. It’s pretty amazing when you think of it. Centuries of differences, and then, just like that, the decision makers are inexplicably pushed towards a path more and more similar to the one our universe’s Earth followed.”

“History repeating itself?” joked Rose.

“Yes! Or, well, people repeating themselves, at least. Human nature being what it is, and all that.”

They shook their heads, amazed.

The Doctor mused aloud: “In a way, we’re now in a reconverging universe – their seventeenth century had a few things in common with ours, the eighteenth and nineteenth a lot more… the Age of Sail, just to name something; and Queen Victoria.” They shared a grin. “By the time WWII rolled around, it did so in both universes – but! And here’s the cinch! With very different driving forces behind it. In fact, it was a wizard who manipulated several governments into the war. No Hitler in this world – not that it made much of a difference, when there were others ready to take his place.”

“What, really?” Rose asked, taken aback.

“Yup. Just a bloke called Grindelwald.”

“He was one of the most powerful Dark Wizards of all time,” interjected Hermione, as often unable to keep herself from showing off her knowledge. “He tried to lead a revolution with the aim of overturning the International Statute of Secrecy and creating a global order led by witches and wizards, who in his vision are superior to muggles and therefore should rule over the ‘second-class citizens’ who don’t have magical powers.”

Rose raised an unimpressed eyebrow: “Same difference, then.”

“Unfortunately, yes,” agreed the Doctor.

Rose sighed. "Well, what does this all mean for us?" she asked, intrigued but confused.

The Doctor’s face split in a huge grin: "That magic is real!"

Ron snorted loudly and grumbled: “I told you that from the very start!”

Everybody chuckled.

"Ok," continued Rose slowly. "So we're in a parallel universe, which is sufficiently different from ours to include the existence of magic."

“Divergent universe. Or, reconvergent if you want. Maybe ‘alternate’ is best…”

"Alternate universe. Ok," nodded Rose. "Is this good or bad?"

"Bad," was the instant reply. "Well, I say bad. It could have been worse, you know. We could be in a universe where humans evolved breathing nitrogen. After all, there's a lot more of it than oxygen in your atmosphere, it might have made sense. Evolutionarily speaking."

" _Our_ atmosphere?" squeaked Hermione. “Don’t you breathe oxygen too?”

She was ignored.

"And generally speaking, it is better than a parallel universe. Less temptations, for one, and it doesn't affect the Tardis, as you might have noticed."

"So why's it bad?" asked Rose, confused.

The Doctor hesitated, but answered: "One, because there are - supposedly - many threats moving along the currents of the Time Vortex from the beginning of the universe, namely the Chronovores which... err... feed on beings like the Tardis; b... no-- two: because returning to our proper universe might not be as easy as I'd like. Especially since I still have no idea how we ended up in this one!"

“You’ve never mentioned Chronovores!”

“Because the Time Lords got rid of them long before Rassilon even passed into the Matrix. Since I’ve never run into a reference to this type of magic-users before, however, there is a good chance that my people never reached this particular universe, thus never hunting the Chronovores to extinction.”

“Great.”

“Oh, well, it wouldn’t matter if I knew how we ended up here. Or better still, how to go back.”

Rose sighed deeply: “Research?”

“Research!”

Not particularly interested in the impending book frenzy, Harry chose to explore the magnificent ship instead. It was a lot like wandering the halls of Hogwarts, except that the Tardis felt more... aware; she certainly interacted more with him – flashing lights and ostentatiously unlocking doors and chiming little bell-sounds in answer to his queries or comments – and he wasn't complaining. She was good company.

She obligingly let him find, in quick succession, an empty room with a gramophone blaring opera music, a little shop-like room with shelves of knick-knacks and a tall counter, a small bedroom entirely done in shades of blue, an empty cavern-like room with stalactites covering its ceiling, a labyrinth of mirrors (much like a mirror-house in an amusement park, which rather delighted Harry for a good while), a different kitchen from the one they’d used the day before (where he managed to put together a few sandwiches, blithely ignoring the improbable colours of what he trusted were hams and cheeses), a perfect copy of Sybil Trelawny’s classroom (which he hurriedly left behind), a cricket field and finally the swimming pool, where he found Rose was relaxing under what felt like real sunlight, though it obviously couldn’t be.

“My brain has reached its daily quota of cramming,” she confided and he nodded sagely. Hermione could have that effect.

The Tardis led him to a futuristic race stadium next, complete with flying motorbikes, and he didn't refrain from lavishing her with compliments, cooing over her utter brilliantness. She was truly special.

He decided to call it a day when his stomach started grumbling again and made his way back to the others, stopping only to rescue poor Ron from a bare, cell-like room whose doors had remained stuck – apparently – for hours. The red-head was grumbling nonsense about running into himself and stupid ships driving him mad the whole way back, while Harry did his best not to laugh.

Meanwhile, the two scholars of the group, who’d apparently remained in the library the whole time, had actually made progress, in that the Doctor had not only isolated the particular incident that had resulted in their presence here and now, but also gained a somewhat clear idea of where, exactly, ‘here and now’ was.

Judging by his dull look and dejected sprawl, however, it wasn’t all good news.

While Rose peppered him with questions, Ron made a beeline for Hermione, who was reading a tome with a colourful cover intently and seemed by turn wryly amused and deprecatingly embarrassed.

“What are you reading?” he asked eagerly, simply because he hadn’t seen her for ages.

“ _Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire_ ,” she answered absently.

Ron and Harry both froze.

“Err... what?”

“One universe’s reality is another’s fiction. Classic,” threw in the Doctor, who didn’t look like he wanted to get up from where he was sprawled any time this century.

Hermione put the book down and sighed wryly: “There’s a whole series – one volume for each of our years in Hogwarts.” She motioned to a small pile next to her. “This one’s the fourth and, I quote: ‘follows Harry Potter, a wizard in his fourth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and the mystery surrounding the entry of Harry's name into the Triwizard Tournament, in which he is forced to compete’.”

“You’re joking.”

“I wish,” she replied. “Look!” And she showed him a drawing that was, unmistakably, a younger version of the three of them before Hagrid’s hut.

Ron stared at her, incredulous: "We're... book characters?"

Harry moaned: "Why am I not surprised?"

“It’s surprisingly accurate,” she said fairly. “Although I don’t remember us squabbling quite that much.”

Ron picked up the nearest one. “ _Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets_ ,” he read aloud, in total disbelief. He skimmed the pages and stopped halfway through, where his name caught his eye: “ _‘You’d be surprised’, said Ron, who was looking apprehensively at the book. ‘Some of the books the Ministry’s confiscated—Dad’s told me—there was one that burned your eyes out. And everyone who read Sonnets of a Sorcerer spoke in limericks for the rest of their lives’_... Blimey. I remember this!”

“Did they really?” asked the Doctor, perking up with interest.

“What?”

“Speak in limericks all the time,” he elaborated. “That sounds kind of cool. We-ell… also really really annoying I suppose…”

Ron slammed the book down on the nearest table. “That’s not the point,” he gritted out.

The Doctor raised his eyebrows and Ron deflated: “It’s just… I _remember_ saying this stuff! And now it’s in a book! A book that says I’ve said it!”

“Yeah, that actually happens to me now and then.” The Doctor grimaced. “It’s always irritating. But look at the bright side!”

“There’s a bright side?” asked Harry in disbelief.

“It’s all in the past!” the Doctor beamed.

He was met with blank looks awaiting clarification.

“You won’t have to do it!” insisted the Doctor. “You’ve already done it.”

“…You’re not making a lick of sense,” said Ron disgustedly.

"It's blurred," exclaimed Rose surprised. She had wandered closer and picked up one of the books, but could not make out the title, or even the picture clearly, much less the text inside. In fact, it was giving her a slight headache.

"It's the Tardis," explained the Doctor with a tired sigh. "She's not only blurring the text, but also our memories of it. That's why you three seem so familiar but I can't really place you."

“You mean I’ve read these books?” asked Rose wonderingly.

"Why would she do something like this?" asked Harry in confusion.

“To prevent any foreknowledge from affecting my actions.”

"That makes no sense,” pointed out Rose. “She doesn't when we get to meet authors and historical characters and such."

"Yes, but I'm not well-tuned enough to this universe's timelines and that makes everything more dangerous.”

“Was that English?”

The Doctor sighed deeply and then, reluctantly, explained further: "My planet was located in a rift, where every single universe converges. Or, most of them at least. Supposedly. Anyway, that's why there was only one Gallifrey; no other universe has one now, because it existed in all at once - and when it was... lost... it was lost for all at once."

“Lost? How do you lose a planet?” asked Harry, taken aback.

The Doctor stiffened but ignored him. "However... I spent a very large portion of my life in our universe, Rose, even back when dimensional travel was achievable; and furthermore, I've been effectively trapped in it ever since... ever since..."

He gulped, unable to finish. Rose grabbed his hand and squeezed, eyes dark and empathetic.

"So you don't feel the timelines here? Or... not as clearly?" she asked gently.

"That's right.”

“Is that why you find this place unnerving? Because it’s not like you, to react as you have been...”

The Doctor shook his head: “Time Lords grow up seeing, feeling, _breathing_ Time. It’s a base instinct that gets sharpened and honed to perfection during the years at the Academy, until that’s how we see the Universe. Rose... Every waking second I can see what is, what was, what could be, what must not. That's the burden a Time Lord carries. But... it is also _who I am_. Who I’ve been for longer than you can contemplate. And suddenly, I’m... not sure. Oh, I can still see the timelines and I have enough experience to move around without great problems, of course, but I’m no longer sure. I’m not sure, Rose.”

Rose was silent, never letting go of his hand.

“So… your ship, she’s reducing the risk by blurring the memories?” asked Harry interestedly.

“Yes. Because if I knew how things go, I’d be tempted to change them, meddle a little; and without being completely aware of timelines, it could spell disaster. Here and now, I can’t even trust my instincts to tell me what’s in flux and what’s fixed – and that’s very, very dangerous, because it means I can’t be sure of what I can or cannot change.”

He gave them a rather bewildered look: “I’m like any of you humans right now. Blundering about, but somehow getting it right… most of the time. I’m living like a human.”

He sounded dazed and Rose couldn’t help but smirk: “Welcome to the club.”

He scowled at her, and when she just smiled, he pouted.

"So... you'll have to work on going back to your proper universe, then? I mean. Immediately?" Harry asked hesitantly.

"Oh, no, no, no!" exclaimed the Doctor cheerfully and seemed to shake himself out of his funk. "I promised you a trip, didn't I? Wouldn't do to break my word!"

He jumped up and suddenly was all manic energy again, sprinting off to the console room, everybody else in tow. He danced around it, pulling a few levers, brushed his fingers along the crystal of the column once before letting his hand drop to the edge of the console, where it rested comfortably.

“So, where to?" He grinned widely. "Backward or forward?"

“Won’t it be dangerous?” asked Rose hesitantly. “I mean, if you’re unsure about what we can meddle with and...”

“We aren’t going to meddle! Just observe. Bit of a vacation, eh?”

She bit her lower lip viciously and he softened. “It’ll be alright.” He shrugged. “I need to get a feel for this universe anyway, if we want to have a hope to go back to ours; might as well have fun while we’re at it.” He smiled contagiously and bounced a little, demanding: “So? So? Past, future, Earth, elsewhere...?”

Suddenly faced with the actuality of a choice, the three magic-users became bashful.

They exchanged hesitant looks. “Anywhere?”

“Anywhere!”

“Did we mention that it also travels in time?” added Rose, eyes sparkling – and she and the Doctor shared a warm, complicit look at the shared memory.

Ron rolled his eyes: “Yes, you did.”

“Fine, then. The Napoleonic Wars,” shrugged Hermione, who'd just finished an extremely interesting historical reconstruction by one of her favourite authors.

Harry and Ron immediately protested, but the Doctor was already dancing around the console with contagious enthusiasm.

“Ah! Napoleon! Now that’s an interesting man, if I ever met one! And anything but small, whatever your books say. I was so jealous of Ian and Barbara when they got to meet him and I didn’t. Of course, I went back later on. I must say, however, I liked Nelson a good deal more. Good friend of mine, Horatio...”

The Tardis lurched violently and started shaking, derailing the Doctor’s rambling as he was too busy holding onto the lever he needed to pull.

"Rose, hold that button down!"

“The blue one or the gold one?”

“Both!”

Unlike the day before, the Time Rotor wasn’t pumping rhythmically. Instead, it was jerking and twitching erratically; its gentle vibration turned into a mechanical screech and a series of violent jolts tossed the three magic-users into the wall of the console room. Rose and the Doctor didn’t seem too worried, though. They were somehow managing to remain at the controls, and more or less upright, and were pushing and pulling and laughing the whole time.

“Mad. The whole of you. Mad, I tell you!” grumbled Ron, holding onto a coral trunk for dear life.

Another fierce lurch tore cries from all of them (though the Doctor’s was more of a whoop) and threw them violently towards the door, before the wheezing sound of materialization announced their arrival, with the accompaniment of a series of jerks and shakes that only slowly tapered off.

The Doctor grabbed his coat with a hand and Rose with the other, half-running to the door with his typical, manic enthusiasm, while the three magic-users picked themselves up amidst grumbles.

The moment he opened the door, a cacophony of sounds exploded in their ears. Cannon booms and deafening explosions dotted by slow rifle fire and the swooshing of things through air; cries and shouts and bellows and screams blaring with almost physical force. The smell of gun smoke and blood and human sweat and reptiles drifted in.

“It’s a battle!” yelled Harry in shock and dismay.

The Doctor was peering out of the doors of the Tardis, but didn’t look too worried. “Oh. I think I may have got the flight a bit wrong.”

“You mean this isn't the Napoleonic Wars?” Irritated by the rough trip and unsettled by the memories of Death Eaters in Hogwarts that the noise was calling up, Hermione had the mocking tone of someone who had known this was just a trick and hadn't expected any better from the fraud, but still managed to be disappointed anyway.

“It’s a war alright,” grumbled Ron darkly, making his way to the door too.

The Doctor, however, turned to them with an unsettling grin: “Of course this is the Napoleonic Wars! Only... better!”

“How come?” asked Harry, sceptical, at the same time as Rose said in a deeply distrustful tone: “Define 'better'.”

The Doctor's alien grin became, if possible, even wider: “It's Napoleonic Wars with DRAGONS!”


	7. It won't be safe,

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Let’s all be very, very polite and – and not French,” said the Doctor, “and most of all – don't touch anything!”  
> ...But of course it was too late.

_The Doctor's alien grin became, if possible, even wider: “It's Napoleonic Wars with DRAGONS!”_

As soon as he said the word ‘dragon’, a massive shadow flew over them, winds being raised in its wake and battering their hair and clothes every which way.

Looking up, their jaws fell at the majestic sight…

The enormous bulk of the beast flew effortlessly through the smoke-filled air, moving against the blue, blue sky and the blaring flashes of explosions in slow, powerful dives and soars; looking almost black from the ground, but now and then letting them glimpse the dark, metallic lustre of its copper-red scales catching the light. With a start, they realized that the sun was also glinting off the metal of guns and rifles – and the sturdy hooks of harnesses.

“But… but… but… They’re riding it!” shouted Ron in horror and admiration both.

The Doctor and Rose were watching with delighted grins.

A particularly loud explosion landed so close that speckles of dirt flew almost to their feet and the three wizards choked down screams.

"Hold on, let's try and get ourselves out of the line of fire," said the Doctor, herding them back into the Tardis without much concern.

“Best idea you’ve had all day,” said Ron vehemently.

They closed the doors hastily while he inputted new coordinates: “Just a little lateral shift... if we go to the top of that cliff we should be able to see the battle clearly.”

Harry lunged at him and wrenched him away from the controls, prompting a scowl from the Time Lord.

"Why would you want to see a bloody battle?" cried the wizard, alarmed. “I say let’s get the hell away!”

"Oh, come on, this is brilliant!" coaxed the Doctor cheerfully. He materialized the Tardis without taking his eyes off Harry and immediately started walking backward towards the doors, extremely proud of himself. “Napoleonic battles fought with a squadron of dragons. It’s like history and fantasy meshed together! This is what I travel for!”

He looked quite put-out at the incredulous looks he was receiving. Luckily, Rose was there to grip his hand and share his grin.

“Fantastic, huh?” she smirked.

“Yup!” he cheered. She really was the best.

Of course, his driving was often as bad as general consensus declared it (not that he’d ever admit it): when they stepped out of the Tardis again, they were hit by an almost solid wall of steam that rapidly covered their clothes and skin with a hot, humid layer of condensing water. No sign of the battle, or even of the site of the battle, were to be found.

"Middle of the night," muttered the Doctor automatically, starting to wade through the steam with wide, slashing motions of his arms.

The mist was just shy of being too hot and so thick they could barely see past arm’s length.

“It’s a sauna!” exclaimed Hermione, cautiously following him.

“Ah... ye-es... Yes! Well, that's brilliant, isn't it?” the Doctor tried to cheer them up. “Don’t you just feel your muscles relaxing? The pores of your skin breathing better? Your mind unwinding from all its stress? It’s luxurious, is what it is. People of all species love a good spa!”

“I’d appreciate it more if I weren’t completely soaked!” grumbled Rose in reply.

A buzzing sound, carried easily in the mist, heralded the fact that the Doctor had found the metal door on the nearest wall. A gust of hot, wet air puffed out when he opened it and steamed in the relative cold of the corridor beyond, which led to a stairway shrouded in darkness.

"What do you think those are?" came Ron’s voice from somewhere in the opposite direction. It had a tone halfway between curious and dreading.

The cold of the corridor was slowly drawing the steam out of the room, letting the wavering image appear, through the white puffs and billows, of a tiled area with benches that morphed gracefully into a cavernous room beyond; this one was even warmer, but drier, and a long, shallow pool ran very nearly its full length.

What had caught the wizard’s attention were the deep niches built into the long wall at regular intervals and protected by a fence of wrought-iron, which the light of several conjured torches was illuminating. Perhaps half were empty, but the others were padded with fabric, and each held a single, massive egg.

“Oh, no,” said Hermione with dread, making her way towards him. “Oh, no, no, no!”

“Are they… are they really…” Rose’s eyes were wide with wonder.

“Dragon eggs!” nodded Harry happily. “Not any breed I recognize, though.”

“Brilliant!” exclaimed the Doctor, running up and down the room to examine them more closely. “Oh, look at you, you gorgeous things!”

Rose got close to the nearest one, observing it in fascination. She didn’t dare touch it, though. A dragon egg... Stuff of legends indeed!

“This is quite ingenious!” cried the Doctor happily. “See, this room, the whole baths… this is how they keep the eggs warm! Obviously they can’t let the dragons brood over them, what with the war and everything, but the hot springs and the sauna set-up work quite well, I’d say. It’s almost as good as burying them near a volcano – especially since I doubt there’s any volcano nearby…” He wandered off, babbling some more about hydraulics and thermal transmission. He was positively fascinated with the system.

"Where are we?" asked Hermione, full of wonder.

“Dunno,” shrugged Rose. “Doctor?” When he didn’t answer, she raised her voice: “Doctor!”

“What?” he started, frazzled.

“Where are we?” she asked again, patiently.

"Hard to say..." replied the Doctor happily, making his way casually back to her, hands in his pockets. "It looks like an official hatching site. I could tell you more if we were out on the surface, but as it is... We’ll have to find some of the locals. Which… might not be easy – middle of the night, as I mentioned. Doubt they’ll be happy to be woken up by a security breach…”

“Security breach?” squeaked Hermione in alarm.

“Well, there’s a war going on,” explained Rose sagely. “And we’ve seen dragons fight. Place like this, where more dragons are made? Bound to be under heavy security!”

“Yeah, and we got in by rather unexplainable means, given the times. So let’s not give them any reason to throw us in jail, eh?”

Rose snorted. The likelihood of that…!

“Let’s all be very, very polite and – and _not French_ ,” said the Doctor, “and most of all – _don't touch anything!_ ”

...But of course it was too late.

Ron and Harry had started off by commenting on the eggs and comparing them to their own experiences (Ron had visited Charlie in Romania once, and Harry had come up close to a nest of Hungarian Horntail eggs, and both remembered Norbert... that is, Norberta…) but their comments had escalated to jokes, and then to dares, and before the more sensible members of their party noticed, they’d vanished some of the railings to ‘check’ the eggs.

Ron was speculating about breed, having so far fancied himself a bit of an expert, at least in comparison to his best friends, and not liking how the colours of the eggs baffled him.

Harry, for his part, was running his hands curiously all over a golden-brown egg. Its sides were faintly pearlescent and spotted with flecks of pale green and wherever he touched, it gave him a faint, buzzing feeling of warm pins and needles in his hands. It was quite pleasant, actually.

Not really knowing what he was doing, he let his magic flow the same way he did when testing a wand for compatibility and the pleasant, tingling feeling intensified while small, grating sounds came from the egg.

“It’s growing harder!” he exclaimed in surprise and before the Doctor's cry of warning stopped echoing in the vaulted room, a crack zigzagged on the shell with a soft sound.

He snatched his hands back. “Oops…!”

The mingled shouts of “Harry!” spanned the range from worried to disbelieving, but all shared a basis of pure exasperation.

The whole egg started rocking back and forth as everybody ran towards Harry in alarm; when he tentatively touched it again, the shell was hard and hot under his hands and taking on an almost glossy quality. It was beginning to crack more and more.

Against their better judgment, they all drew closer, wary but fascinated.

“I never imagined I would see a dragon hatching; let alone twice,” murmured Hermione softly.

A furious rapping noise started up from inside against the shell, covering the comment Ron’s snort had anticipated.

Gasps greeted the first glimpse of a clawed wing tip poking out of a crack, and the jerky movements of what were probably talons scrabbling.

Finally, a toss of a little, clawed leg fractured the shell for good, speckling them all with tiny fragments of shell and egg-slime.

The dragonet appeared, shaking itself out vigorously, and spat bits of shell in every direction, sputtering. It was still covered with the slime of the interior, and shone wet and glossy in the light of the dancing flames.

“Wow,” breathed Harry, catching its attention.

“Oh, you’re beautiful!” sighed the Doctor.

Curiously, the little dragon sniffed the kneeling wizard’s hand, then darted a little, forked tongue out to taste it.

It drew a sigh of wonder from Harry, who cautiously petted the head nuzzling his hand. The dragonet obviously liked it, judging by the deep growling noise of contentment it made.

Its body was a soft, golden colour, made warmer by the fire-light, and speckled with pale, tiger-striped markings in a bright green colour along its sides and wings. Its teardrop-shaped scales had a horny, translucent sheen.

It was, altogether, very lovely.

It experimentally fluttered out its wings, still soft and crumpled against its back. “I’m hungry,” she told Harry with adorable sternness – and it was, most definitely, a she.

“Oh, um, ah, yeah,” scrambled the wizard. “Yeah, of course. Um. Err… let me transfigure you something.”

“Harry!” burst out Hermione, whose tenseness was visible. “You can’t transfigure food, it’s the first of the five Principal Exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfigura--"

“Yes, yes, I did take my NEWTs, remember?” the wizard interrupted, quite annoyed. “I don’t mean to make it out of nothing! And food might not be conjured, but it can be summoned, transformed and increased quite easily!”

While the witch blushed, he whipped out his wand and set to work, the image of the Tardis kitchen clear enough for his overpowered accio to work. He’d always been good at summoning charms – ironically enough, thanks to another dragon.

The lump of meat that came flying to them made the Doctor’s eyebrows rise in shock, but Harry ignored everybody, turning instead to the dragonet and doubling the amount without effort while coaxing her to accept the raw meat.

She yipped and threw herself at it quite happily, tearing at the meat with gusto.

Harry laughed. She was adorable.

“You’re turning into Hagrid, you are,” muttered Ron disgustedly. “You’ll be giving her rum and teddybears next.”

“What is a teddybear?” the dragonet piped up curiously.

Ron gaped at her like a fish and Harry burst out laughing, stroking her scales fondly and praising her like an indulging parent. He already loved her.

Deciding the topic wasn’t interesting after all, the little one turned her attention to her meat once more, quickly devouring it. Then, she started looking about herself, her bright green eyes full of curiosity and intelligence.

She jumped on the nearest bench and down again and batted lightly at a dangling piece of railing with a paw, watching it curiously; slowly, she started exploring the other people around her.

Ron got a friendly bump of her head to his legs, which made him chuckle, Hermione was quickly dismissed as uninteresting and Rose’s scratching her head drew a purr from her, but was tolerated only for the briefest time; when she got to the Doctor, however, she was clearly fascinated. She reared up onto her hind legs to peer at his face more closely, looking into his gentle eyes with open fascination. She studied the Doctor with great interest and trustingly nuzzled his hand.

He cooed at her, calling her ‘pretty girl’, and she snapped her head up, looking him straight in the eyes, cocking her head to the side in curiosity. Then she bounced back to Harry and jumped into his arms, almost unbalancing him.

“Ooff!”

“Am I pretty?” she asked with childish seriousness.

Harry smiled: “Very pretty.”

“Are you going to give me a pretty name then?” she asked excitedly. “All the voices kept talking about what are the best names. If I’m pretty, I deserve a pretty name!” she proclaimed.

“Very true,” acquiesced Harry with mock-seriousness. “Let me think. Hmm…”

He was a bit startled to realize that his mind was actually coming up with a blank.

“It has to be a pretty name,” she insisted. “Not a boring one like Nitidus.”

The Latin term sent his mind tumbling through spells, even as he commented absently: “Hmm, well, that’s a boy’s name, and you’re a girl, so no danger.”

The dragonet looked quite pleased by this and settled a little, though she still watched Harry intently and thumped her tail excitedly.

_Accio, Expelliarmus, Fidelius_ , no, no… She was female, after all… _Impedimenta?_ _Hexia, Alohomora… Alohomora?_ He turned his nose up. No. Not a spell, definitely no…

She head-butted him. “Well?”

A flower name? His mind flew to his mum, but… that wasn’t a very dragonesque name, was it? A star, like in the Black family? If she was a boy dragon, he’d have been thrilled to call her Sirius, but as it was…

And then the perfect name bloomed into his mind and he grinned: “Fortuna.”

She stilled, and repeated it to herself in a loud whisper: “Fortuna.” Then she jumped high in the air and shouted with enthusiasm: “I’m Fortuna!”

Harry laughed and caught up in the enthusiasm, his four companions cheered.

Right about that time, a woman in servant clothes came in, saw them, dropped the cleaning supplies she was carrying and let out a bloodcurdling scream.

The Doctor tried a cheerful “Oh, hello!” but sighed in resignation when she ran out as if hungry wolves were on her heels. He rubbed his face wearily. This was becoming far too complicated…

Caught up in the wonder that was the little dragon, the three magic-users didn’t pay much attention, merely laughing the woman’s panic off; only Rose spotted the worried look on the Doctor's face and grabbed his hand tightly, asking quietly: “Are we in trouble?”

He smiled faintly at her: “Oh, the usual. Unless we’re really, really lucky, we’re about to be carted off as spies. Or executed as traitors. Or both.”

Rose grimaced, but had to admit that he likely had a point.

“And we can’t just take the Tardis and run, because we have to sort out Harry and… Fortuna,” she sighed.

“Yup,” was the Doctor’s sympathetic assent.

Then he turned to the other three and intimated with all the seriousness and authority he could muster (which was a lot): “Hide your magic.”

With a shiver, their cheer died and they quickly stashed their wands under their sleeves and nodded seriously, not even asking why. They knew their history. Witch trials might be behind them, but the Enlightment wasn’t exactly progress. It merely classed witchcraft as a mental illness, downgrading magic-users from demons and criminals to madmen – but still locking them up.

A great racket of stamping foots and shouted orders heralded the arrival of a small group of soldiers and younger boys, in white breeches and hastily thrown on bottle-green waist jackets, or just shirts. All were heavily armed and they didn’t waste any time in pushing the five strangers against the walls under threat of swords and cutlasses and unstable-looking rifles. Some of them almost dropped their weapons in shock when they caught sight of Fortuna, but soon their grip tightened and their expression hardened.

The Doctor started talking fast, as was his wont, but with the clamour of voices and weapons and boots most of it was lost.

Ron was shouting something or other, even while he was being backed against a wall.

Fortuna was upset, trying to leap off into the air and shouting: "Oh! Oh! They are attacking us! Quick, let us kill them!"

Harry was shushing her and holding her back by force as best he could and stroking her to calm her down, but it was clear that she wanted to jump on these invaders and tear them apart. He could barely keep his grip on her. Ferocious little thing.

It was chaos.

Finally, the Doctor let out a bellowing shout and in his typical, charismatic way, instead of being instantly shot by all the high-strung soldiers around them, he managed to get actual silence, imposing himself over the pandemonium with no apparent effort.

“Terribly sorry to intrude, but if I'm correct, and I usually am with these sorts of things, then this is all a terrible misunderstanding!” He ignored the snorts this elicited and went on at high speed. “See, we were just passing by, no plans of staying long whatsoever, and the little one decided it was time to come out and see the world, can’t blame her, really, there’s so much to see and do, after all, wouldn’t you want to start ASAP? That’s right, you would! So you see, perfectly understandable, bit of a mishap, sure, but nothing to worry about, no harm done and all, right.”

A willowy boy with huge light brown eyes repeated, aghast: “You were _just passing by_ a covert of the Aerial Corps?”

"Ah..."

“They’re French thieves!” yelled someone, and instantly the cry was taken up by half a dozen voices. “Spies! Robbers!”

“Oi! Watch who you’re calling a French!” growled Rose, her accent coming out more strongly than usual.

“My Captain isn’t a spy!” cried Fortuna from Harry’s arms, quite indignant. “How dare you! Come here – I’ll bite you!”

This seemed to give them pause. Some fidgeted a little, unsure, and hissed murmurs broke all around, hostile and perplexed at once.

Finally a tall fellow muttered loudly: “Never heard a French sound as if they were Cockneys!” which provoked a scattering of laughs from the younger ones in the group.

A short but heavy-set woman wearing golden epaulettes on the shoulders of her open, bottle-green coat, who had remained quiet and watched matters unfold with scarily intense eyes, stepped forth and made an effort to gain control of the situation. She had fine, blondish hair and a rather prominent nose, and when she waved her right hand about, they could spot burn scarring all over it.

“I suppose, if you were thieves you wouldn’t be this obnoxious... you’d be more concerned with smuggling away your prize,” she said thoughtfully, “and you do sound like Londoners.”

“I sound like a Londoner ‘cause I’m a Londoner,” snapped Rose, feigning offence.

Heavy sighs burst forth from practically everyone present, not all of them of relief, but most weapons were lowered or outright put away.

“Alright, so you aren’t spies, or thieves. Just who the hell are you, then? And what do you think you’re doing, in a secret, high security location, property of the Aerial Corps?”

“We... were curious of your wondrous baths?” tried Harry hopefully.

A flat glare was aimed at him with deadly fury.

Harry grimaced apologetically: “I’m quite awful at spur-of-the-moment lies,” he muttered softly to Rose.

The blonde smiled weakly: “Oh well. It was worth a try,” she whispered.

Luckily, they didn’t depend on Harry’s lying skills. Undaunted by the suspicious glares, the Doctor whipped out his psychic paper (the spare one, as he seemed to have misplaced the other somehow) and rattled off authoritatively: “We’re building inspectors appointed by His Royal Majesty to the task of evaluating the possibility of a complete overhaul of the hydraulic system in this compound.”

Quickly jumping on the bandwagon, Rose straightened and said severely: “Yes. Quite. We’re here on very important official – err, inspecting.” She sniffed haughtily: “Why was there no-one here to welcome us?”

The soldiers gaped at her.

“Or at the very least some guards...” added Ron sensibly. “I mean, shouldn’t the eggs be monitored at all times?”

“Quite. This smacks of slothfulness. Are you the official in charge?” put in Hermione in a severe tone that gave her best friends a little flashback of Professor McGonagall’s stern looks.

Looking a little taken aback, the woman said: “I’m Captain Moreton, on Salvius. I’m the senior Captain currently here, so I suppose...” She shook her head as if to clear it, frowning at the Doctor’s paper. “This actually looks in order,” she murmured, perplexed.

“More in order than your guarding roster, I’d say,” huffed Rose, provoking angrily muttered comments from half the presents. "What if the dragon had hatchet with no-one present?"

Captain Moreton grimaced, handing the psychic paper back to the Doctor, and straightened her spine proudly: "Normally, everybody is in and out of the baths quite often, so it's easy to keep an eye on the eggs and take action as soon as one of them begins to look a bit hard, indicating that it's ready to hatch," she explained tiredly. "Not that it always works," she added ruefully, gesturing to Harry and Fortuna.

The dragonet growled at her, but was ignored.

"Why was there no-one here tonight, then?" insisted Hermione sensibly. "It seems to me, you should have been monitoring them all the time!"

One of the burliest men there half-yelled, bristling in defensiveness: "It's the middle of the night! We only stay with the eggs all day and night long when one shows signs of hardening. As none of them did... and that one, in particular, shouldn't have been ready for another year at least."

Harry clutched the dragonet worriedly: "Does this mean she's premature? Is she going to have troubles? Should I have her looked over by a vet?"

"A what?"

"A... doctor who specializes in the care of dragons," supplied the Doctor, who was more experienced with cross-temporal adaptation of lexicon.

"Ah, a dragon surgeon,” nodded Captain Moreton. “Well, you'll have to regardless, but she won't be having any problems. Once an egg is ready, it's ready, and that's that. No accelerating the hatching, no stopping when it's time."

"Aye, lad. Dragon egg hatchin’ is quite unpredictable ‘til the very end; even knowin’ the species we c’n only narrow the process down to a span of months or, f’r the larger breeds, years,” added a short, broad-shouldered red-head from the side, smiling at the time travellers more amicably than the rest of his company.

"Maximus grounded his intended Captain for years," volunteered an excitable boy who couldn’t be more than fourteen. "Berkley was quite discouraged."

Captain Moreton nodded: "While I, on the other hand, was dragged down to the baths at the crack of dawn a good five months before I expected it," she added wryly. "But there's nothing to it. The hardening is the only warning we get, so all we can do is make the best of it."

"It's strange, though,” commented a couple others. “There was no indication that it was starting to harden! None at all!"

Harry had a private suspicion that his magic had had something to do with it, but kept his counsel. He merely smiled down at the dragonet in his arms, who was wriggling and asking anxiously: “Are they talking about me? Well? Are they?”

Ron didn't bother hiding his poor opinion of the locals: "There should still have been a guard."

"Yes," Captain Harcourt sighed. "But we’ve had some rough few months and are all tired beyond words and when news of the victory down on the Channel came, we were so exhilarated... really, we slacked off. There's no excuse, and now we'll pay the price of our laziness." She looked wearily at Harry and Fortuna. "This is a right pickle we're in."

“Well, you can’t blame us,” muttered Harry, feeling defensive. His arms tightened around little Fortuna, who was darting her eyes here and there and everywhere in great interest, but obviously wasn’t understanding much of what was going on.

“You aren’t supposed to be here!” yelled the burly man again.

“Of course we are, it says so right here!” retorted the Doctor, waving the psychic paper madly again.

“Barten, please.” Captain Moreton raised a hand wearily to calm her irascible companion down, but he paid her no mind: “We weren’t notified!” he shouted.

“Well of course you weren’t! If you were warned in advance, then it wouldn’t be a proper inspection, would it?” said the Doctor triumphantly.

“You could hide all sorts of skeletons in your cupboards…” said Rose virtuously.

She garnered weird looks at that and someone who sounded very young whispered loudly: “Why would anyone put skeletons in cupboards?”

The Doctor managed to stifle his chuckle and maintained his stern frown, matching Captain Moreton’s glare with a mild one of his own.

Giving up, the woman sighed tiredly: "Well, at least you're all British: I suppose that's something."

"They could be traitors!" shouted the hot-tempered Barten in surly protest.

"Ah, but we're not," replied the Doctor, as smug as if he'd won a logic contest.

"Whatever you are, we're stuck with the situation now,” said Captain Moreton with a gruff glare. She favoured Harry with a disgusted grimace: “I suppose we’ll have to train you up.”

She turned to the heavy-set, friendly red-head, ignoring Harry’s sputtered protests unconcernedly. "What do you think will be their most likely assignation?"

The man scratched his chin thoughtfully: "Dunno 'bout that. Yellow Reapers c'n be quite clannish, an' prefer to work wi' other of their own breed, but the Malachites are less fussy 'bout that, and Anglewings are quite happy to fly in formation, and she’s a cross o’ both. Yeah, ye'll prob'ly be put in a formation, lad. Soon as we get ye trai'd up a bit."

Harry dropped Fortuna, who yelped loudly. "What? But I can't stay here! I have people waiting for me at home and - and I've already fought in a war, thank you very much, I have no interest in being embroiled in another!"

Captain Moreton raised an eyebrow: "And you think you have a choice, lad? You're a Captain in His Majesty's Aerial Corps, now. You'll do your duty to your country and that's that."

"And if he doesn't?" asked Ron with an unfriendly glare.

The woman went cold-eyed: "We're in times of war. Deserters get executed."

There was a very uncomfortable silence after that.

It was broken by Fortuna, who’d wandered up to the red-faced Barten and was eyeing him with unfriendliness. She turned her head to look at Harry and asked innocently: “Can I bite him?”

Everybody chuckled and some of the tension started to slowly dissipate, as they watched in amusement Harry’s attempt to explain why the fierce little dragonet shouldn’t bite anyone, no, not even if they’re mean and yell a lot.

Tentatively at first, conversations started up around Harry and Fortuna’s situation; soon Hermione was bombarding the soldiers – no, the _aviators_ – with questions, but her bossy and overly-eager manners weren't winning her any sympathy from the irritated and overwhelmed group.

Rose, on the other hand, had a friendly way of asking questions that meant she quickly had a group of boys and girls her age and younger chatting excitedly at her.

“We think the Anglewing over there may hatch soon; that would be famous,” one of them said longingly. "And the reddish one over there was expected to hatch two months ago already! Poor Mayes has been grounded the whole time…"

“Don’t know what he complains about – he’ll get to fly soon enough, and with his own dragon to boot,” grumbled a few others.

All of the aviators who didn't wear the golden epaulettes of captainship already, looked at the eggs with wistful expressions; they also shot Harry ugly looks of jealousy and envy that had Ron fingering his hidden wand in nervousness. His best friend, however, was much too distracted with cooing at the baby dragon to notice.

The only silent one was, strangely enough, the Doctor. He had his hands firmly plunged in his trousers pockets and was contemplating Fortuna with deep concentration, mind running a million miles per minute.

After a while, he reached a decision and wandered up to the green-eyed wizard, nodding to himself.

“Ah… Harry?” he said cautiously. He grabbed the young man by an arm and dragged him a little while away, throwing a charming grin back at the baffled (and some, grim-looking) glares the aviators who’d been talking to Harry directed at him. “Just a little private word with him, won’t be a minute!” he said reassuringly.

As soon as they were out of hearing range, he turned to the wizard with utmost seriousness: “Harry, you should consider staying like they want--”

“What?!” Harry yelped.

“--for the time being,” hissed the Doctor meaningfully. “I could spirit you away at once, no problem, but what about Fortuna? Are you going to leave her here?”

They turned to glance at the dragonet, who was practically purring under Ron’s stroking hands. Harry felt a stab of panic at the mere idea of being separated from her.

“Didn’t think so,” stressed the Doctor grimly. “Look, I’m not saying you should stay to fight – Rassilon knows I will never, ever push anyone to join a war, not under any circumstances – but you need to learn how to look after her and these people are the experts…”

Harry darted his green eyes from the dragonet to the Time Lord and back. He licked his suddenly dry lips a couple times: “I’m never going back, am I?”

“What? Of course you are,” said the Doctor, genuinely surprised. “I merely meant that you should stay until she’s grown up, at least a little; enough for you to learn how to best care for her. That’s all!”

“Yeah, yeah, but it doesn’t matter,” sighed Harry heavily. “She’ll grow alright. She’s a dragon! What do you think my people will do to her? In my world, dragons are kept in preserves. Penned in like... like animals! They won’t care that she’s intelligent – or worse, they will care, and section her away in the DoM to, to experiment or... and I’ll never see her again!” His voice rose with his upset.

“Ah...” The Doctor rubbed his left ear pensively. “Right. That’s a problem.” Then he perked up: “What if you kept her a secret?”

Harry smiled without cheer: “Oh, sure. Big scaly dragon... that bloke said she’ll probably reach 15 tonnes! And she’s got a fighter personality to boot. Of course I’ll be able to hide her in the garden shed!” he said sarcastically. He shook his head and said bitterly: “No, it’s here or... or leaving her – and that’s not an option. Not for me.”

He moved away, looking glum, and Ron and Hermione quickly joined him in a little tight group, apart from everyone else, confabbing furiously.

The Doctor however wasn’t put out. He followed him and slapped his shoulder familiarly, grinning madly: “I have just the solution for you!”

He marched off, grabbing Rose’s hand on his way and leaving a bunch of bewildered people behind. “Don’t go anywhere!” he shouted cheerily over his shoulder.

“Doctor?” asked Rose, baffled by the way he was dragging her away. “What, exactly, are we doing?”

Most of the aviators followed them and cried out in shock at spotting the Tardis. They all gathered around the incongruous blue box and started flinging bewildered questions – ranging from ‘Where did that come from?’ to ‘What the hell is a police box anyway?’.

The Doctor didn’t bother answering any of them; he simply pushed Rose inside and followed, leaning out of the doors with a cheerful grin to wave at the assembled aviators: “Right. Don’t go anywhere, ok? We'll... be right back.”

“What do you mean, you’ll be right back?” shouted Hermione shrilly. She elbowed her way forward through the complaining aviators. “Where do you think you’re going? Doctor? _Doctor!”_

“Not to worry!” came the hasty and far too cheerful reply. “I’ll just go pick something up sixty thousand years from now, really quick. Something important – which I really, really hope will have been invented because, come to think of it, there’s no guarantee that this universe will produce it, but why borrow troubles? I’m sure I will find what I need, well, what Harry needs, really. And then I'll come back for you. Be prepared!”

"DOCTOR!"


	8. It won’t be calm.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You call that going well?” snorted Hermione.  
> “We're all accounted for. Also, so're our limbs,” pointed out Rose reasonably.

The Doctor's voice echoed from the Tardis: "I’ll be right back!"

“What?” Ron, aghast, joined his girlfriend in shouting at the alien: “Hold on, you can’t just leave us here! DOCTOR!”

“We’ll come with you – Doctor, wait!”

But the Time Lord cheerfully slammed the door shut on Hermione’s outraged shout and didn’t pay any mind to the flurry of hits she was peppering the door with as he started the take off sequence.

“We’ll be back in no time,” he reassured Rose.

The blonde raised an eyebrow, but grabbed a coral strut for support without comment.

It really didn’t take long. This universe had, indeed, produced just what the Doctor had hoped to find, somewhat sooner than he’d predicted too, and they managed to procure it without any major incidents. Not even a small fight over haggling. Rose quite enjoyed the pink cobbles on the street of the market area of Rhodhatnia too.

When they landed back in what the Doctor insisted was the time they’d left the three wizards in, they were somewhat surprised to find themselves in the middle of a green glen, the dew of dawn still glistening on the grass blades even though the sun was up. A ring of rocky mountains stood against the morning sky, looming close; to their far left, speckles of refracting light hinted at a lake.

Neither had time to comment before majestic shadows passed at speed over them. A formation of seven dragons was in flight above their heads, two regal heavyweights gliding ponderously amidst a flurry of five lightweights that seemed to dance purposefully in an intricate pattern around each other.

The Doctor let out a delighted ‘ooh!’ and Rose gasped in delight. Dragons flying on the wind of morning were breathtakingly beautiful.

A powerful voice bellowed from a distance: “Ahoy there!”

They spun around and spotted the silhouette of a tall man running towards them, waving his arms madly. As he drew closer and they shielded their eyes from the sun somewhat, they recognized more and more details – a simple, white linen shirt smeared with something dark; sturdy, snugly-fitted breeches; leather boots; a spotted neckerchief... and bright red hair.

With a start, Rose realized that it was Ron. A rather tan and muscular Ron, sporting a wide grin.

"Look what the cat's dragged in!" he shouted joyfully. "Wasn't sure we'd ever see you again!"

He laughed at their dumbfounded faces.

“I take it, it’s been more than ten minutes?” asked Rose with hesitant humour.

Ron snorted: “Try ten months.”

She rolled her eyes, muttering about _12 hours_ under her breath. The Doctor had the grace to look faintly embarrassed, running a hand over the back of his head.

“You... don’t seem upset,” he said cautiously.

“Well, I rather like it here,” admitted Ron easily. “Wasn’t easy at first, and mind you, I don’t like tanning hides, that’s for sure, but the rest of it isn’t bad. Never a dull moment. Come on, let’s go back to the covert and find the others...”

A little bemused and a little sheepish, the Doctor followed the red-head’s quick strides, grateful for the way Rose’s hand slipped into his and squeezed in comfort.

The covert was lively and busily filled with people working on all sorts of things, from scrubbing leather and carrying laundry heaps to studying complex patterns of multicoloured flags and from mucking out to inspecting weapons; orders were being shouted and calls given out all over the place, rising over the bustling chatter and noise of the various daily chores.

Everybody stopped in their tracks and stared open-mouthed as the three of them made their way quickly to the biggest building, tasks forgotten in favour of gaping (or glaring suspiciously) and whispering madly among each other. The Doctor rolled his eyes. Humans. Always gossiping!

Ron didn’t look bothered and led them confidently through the crowded courtyard area and through a series of almost empty rooms beyond, then out again where a group of dragons were gathered, with intent interest, around a small, feminine figure who stood straight next to a huge slate stone blackboard, obviously lecturing. Even dwarfed by the massive forms of her ‘students’, she had an air of stern authority that made the Doctor grin as he recognized Hermione.

His grin faded when Ron cheerfully called out to her and she turned to face them: the witch looked pale and haggard and as if she hadn’t slept properly in months. Which... she probably hadn’t, the Doctor admitted silently to himself, and winced.

As she spotted them, her words died on her lips and she stared, incredulous.

Ron didn’t waste any time in leading them over, cheerfully calling out to her, but she barely paid any attention to him, eyes riveted on the Doctor and Rose. She took a few staggering steps forwards and raised a wobbly hand as if to touch them for reassurance that they were really there.

Embarrassed, the Doctor ran a hand over the back of his head and opened his mouth to say something – possibly ‘I’m sorry’ – but before he could utter a word Hermione darted forward and slapped him. Soundly.

“Ouch!” he exclaimed, a hand darting up to cradle his abused cheek. “What was that for?”

“Ten. MONTHS!” screamed Hermione, sounding borderline hysterical.

Seeing as this was a rather more expected reaction, Rose didn’t bother hiding her snickering. The Doctor, however, had the guts to look indignant and rub the side of his face with the wounded air of a five year old who doesn’t understand why the grown-ups are so upset.

“Ten months! Wondering and fretting, no idea if you’d ever be back, having to fit in, not knowing what to do, for how long we might be trapped here, if you’d ever be back! We had to come up with the most ridiculous lies! Ten months of nightmares – and all because of you! I can’t believe you have the guts to show your face, you- you- _you!”_ She was sputtering with fury.

“Now, listen-” tried the Doctor ineffectively; but she barely drew breath before launching in an even louder rant.

“You left us! For _ten months_! Back in a minute, right! You accursed... – it was months, _months_ , Doctor! No idea of what had happened to you, whether we’d ever see you again, maybe you’d forgotten us, maybe you’d just abandoned us, maybe you were dead in a ditch somewhere, and we stuck here, climbing mirrors to stave off suspicions, do you have _any_ idea...!”

Suddenly, she was fumbling with sleeve of her no-nonsense wool dress and Ron, who knew her well, hastened to grab her hands before she could reach her hidden wand and do something drastic in public. Like setting a flock of angry birds on the Doctor.

Prudently, the Time Lord moved behind the scarce protection of Rose’s petite frame. The venting witch looked livid enough to sock him again! He looked rather displeased with the dressing down he was receiving. “Really, it was an honest mistake...” he tried again.

Hermione cut him off, shrilly: “You just _left_ us, you arrogant alien sod! Oh my God I’m so glad you’re here, I’m going to kill you! You left us! To fend for ourselves – no resources, no cover story – you just left us! In the past – in the _wrong_ past!”

The scene was broken by the smallest of the dragons, a big but lean, dark-blue-skinned dragon with exceptionally long wings and intelligent, yellow-orange eyes, coming closer.

“Ah... Miss Granger?” he asked politely, interrupting the witch’s rant. “Are we not continuing our lesson?” He sounded very young and eager and effectively derailed Hermione’s hysterics. She blinked up at the snout he was curving down to peer at her and looked completely blank, as if she’d forgotten his existence altogether.

Ron came to the rescue: “ ‘Fraid not, Priscus,” he said in a sympathetic voice, raising a hand to pat the closest, orange-tipped wing. “Not today. I think Miss Granger rather needs a cup of tea right now.”

That jerked her back into the present: “Ronald Weasley, if you think some tea can be enough to calm me down...! So help me...!”

“Why, I don’t know why you’re so upset in the first place...” sniffed the rather sulky Doctor without a shred of tact. “Ron doesn’t seem to mind at all.”

Hermione exploded.

“ _You left us here!”_ she shouted shrilly, wrenching her hand away from Ron’s grip and going for her wand again.

“What? It's not like I could take you along - or did you want to leave poor Harry here all alone?” the Time Lord scoffed.

“Doctor!” exclaimed Rose, reprimanding.

Ron hugged Hermione from behind, preventing her from cursing the maddening alien on the spot; he made a point to glare furiously over her head, however. The git was _not_ helping.

The Doctor sighed deeply, giving up on being mulish: “I _am_ sorry. So sorry. I honestly didn’t mean to be gone more than a few minutes...”

“You could have _asked_!” retorted Hermione, still shouting. “And I notice you didn’t leave _Rose_ behind!”

Completely without conscious thought, the Doctor’s hand grabbed Rose’s, tight – well of course he hadn’t left Rose behind, he’d learned his lesson on that spaceship with France on it, thank you very much, and anyway, the very thought made him rather ill...

“Aargh!” In the face of his not-entirely-faked bewilderment, Hermione collapsed on herself, breathless with her own rage, and turned in Ron’s arms to clutch his shirt with a sob; Rose elbowed the Doctor rather painfully to stop him from making things worse yet again. He had, if nothing else, the decency to look a little sheepish.

By then, quite a crowd had gathered, eagerly peering at the scene from windows and doorsteps. A few more dragons drew closer too, getting into each other’s space in the rather crowded courtyard; their deep voices resonated off the walls, even though they were trying to keep their comments discreet. Rose was utterly fascinated.

“Come on,” cajoled Ron in a murmur. “Nice cup of tea, you’ll see, you’ll feel better for it, Mum swears by it, you know...”

“My Mum is the same,” nodded Rose with a kind smile, turning away from her dragon-gawking at last. “A good cuppa can solve most problems, she says.”

Hermione snorted into Ron’s shirt, but composed herself enough to formally dismiss her class of huge and eager students. She still glared murderously at the Doctor, but since she was no longer actively trying to do him bodily harm, Ron decided it was as good as they’d get and corralled them back towards the canteen, leaving the bulky dragons to sort themselves out and chatter contentedly on their way to the training grounds.

Soon, the four of them were sat around one end of a long wooden table with steaming cups of tea before them.

“Aaah! ...Tea!” sighed the Doctor, whom Rose had often suspected was constitutionally incapable of _not_ rambling. “The cornerstone of a great civilization, tea is. A superheated infusion of free radicals and tannin. Just the thing for heating the synapses. A good cup of tea once saved my life, truly, just ask--”

Hermione slammed her half-empty cup down so furiously it shattered, spraying the hot liquid around. The Doctor halted in mid-ramble and hastened to take a gulp.

Quite a few other people had gathered too, aviators and servants alike, including Captain Moreton (Lieutenant Barten, they soon discovered, had been recently deployed in Spain), to gawk at them and marvel uncomfortably at the Doctor’s story. Not that many believed his claim of ‘having just popped over to a market for a minute’.

Rose was rather uncomfortable with the open suspicion she and the Doctor were regarded with, though the fact that no-one was overtly hostile gave her a measure of hope; nevertheless, she resolved to try and be cautious, since the Doctor, of course, wouldn't.

She was also delighted and a bit amused when she noticed that all of the younger ones, and most of the older too, looked up to Hermione with a kind of deep admiration tinged with the fidgety wariness of a pupil who hasn’t done his homework.

She sat among them sipping her tea with all the regal grace of a queen (Rose was strongly reminded of Queen Victoria’s stately displeasure) and firmed her lips so tightly they thinned into a line. The Doctor gulped down his scalding tea under her glare and Rose quickly hid her grin in her own cup.

Harry breezed in then, clad in a long, bottle-green aviator's coat; he was cheerful and excited about their return and greetings and exclamations chased each other swiftly, with questions being thrown around by everybody with hurried animation.

Harry and Ron, it became quickly apparent, were far less angry than their friend; mostly because they had fared better.

The dark-haired wizard, in a remarkable display of adaptability, had fit himself in this new world quite happily. Most of his talk revolved around his little dragon, who wasn't so little anymore: he kept on gushing about her every other sentence.

To the disappointment of the breeders but Harry's private delight, Fortuna had not grown much and at ten and a half pounds rather skirted the line between a middleweight and a lightweight. She had, however, the instinctual aerial manoeuvrability of her Anglewing mother, and Harry had proven almost unbelievably skilled at coaxing both speed and accuracy from her, even in the throes of the craziest, most breath-taking manoeuvres. Half the aviators on training rotation were utterly terrified of flying with them; but those who’d chosen to be his crew alternated between utter glee up in the air and bragging loudly when on the ground.

Everybody talked of the two of them and their antics with a mixture of disbelief and pride. Apparently, he and his dragon shared a love for flying fast and a skilful recklessness for aerial manoeuvres, as well as a core of warm-hearted bravery, that made them regular heroes in everybody’s eyes.

They hadn’t seen battle yet, to Harry’s relief and Fortuna’s grumbles; rather, they’d started a very successful career as scouts (and if Harry’s skill with concealing and spying spells was part of their success, most just put it down to luck, so it was alright).

Amongst all the praising of the best dragon to ever live, at least in his humble opinion, Harry let drop a number of hints about the few friends he'd made since being sent here to Scotland, among the other Captains of Winchesters and Greylings, as well as among the Lieutenants of the heavier dragons.

He would be sorry to leave, even though he looked forwards to seeing the family and friends back home again.

Ron, rather to the Doctor's surprise, had settled in very well too.

“I’m a leather master, now,” he explained, showing them stained hide gloves with the Corps’ insignia on them. “Started off as an apprentice, of course, but I got promoted very quickly. It’s the sturdiness I can guarantee, you see. Hagrid, back at Hogwarts, would often tell me about how to best treat the hides with this or that potion and...” he made a depreciative movement with his hand, as if to belittle his achievements, but his eyes shone with pride. “It helps I know the Scottish plants and such well. Plus, they like my designs.”

“I tell you, what he can do with leather, it’s nothing short of magic!” one of the apprentice boys interjected with enthusiasm.

Ron lowered his head modestly, hiding a smirk.

It was clear that he was the best liked of the three magic-users. He'd been eager to work and learn, and even more eager to sneak down to the village with his fellow apprentices, ground crew members and midwingmens more or less his age, to enjoy the local beer and the welcoming girls (although he'd made it clear pretty soon that he was betrothed, which mollified Hermione a little, and disappointed most of the girls in the Corps a lot). Everybody thought well of him.

He, too, would be sad and glad to go at the same time.

Only Hermione had had a hard time of it; the time period she’d found herself in was not particularly suited for bright, independent, gifted women.

It hadn’t stopped her from rising in everybody’s esteem, aided in part by the Longwings’ predilection for female Captains and the subsequent more... equal opportunities... policy of the Aerial Corps; nor had it prevented her from making a difference – the _School of Learning for Accomplished Dragons_ she’d created was still a baffling concept to most aviators, let alone the rest of Britain, but had been a true hit with the dragons themselves.

Nevertheless, she was _quite_ ready to leave the entire experience behind.

It was clear, however, that Harry would be going nowhere without his dragon; an eventuality that the Doctor had seen from the very first (and that any other aviator had given for granted, knowing the nature and strength of a true bond of Captain to Dragon).

“Luckily, I have the perfect solution!”

Triumphantly, the Doctor produced from his pocket what he’d bought on Rhodhatnia: a bulky, shiny metal contraption about the size of his forearm, shaped like a giant peanut.

“This,” he said with relish, “is a portable compression field generator running on magical energy! We-ell... not _yet_ , of course; but once I’ve jiggery-pokered it a little, it will – it will be the first ever magical compression field generator. Oooh! I could call it a mag-comp!”

“Or not,” deadpanned Rose in amusement.

“And what’s that when it’s at home?” asked Ron, ignoring Harry’s guffawed “ _Jiggery-pokered?_ That a technical term?”

The Doctor replied with smirking dignity: “Of course it is. I came first in jiggery pokery, I’ll have you know. Compression fields,” he went on, turning to Ron without missing a beat, “are used – well, _will_ be used, I suppose, but that’s the problem with time travel, it makes verb tenses really confusing in languages like yours – anyway, it’s technology used to fit large objects into small spaces. Clever, isn’t it? Of course, it will take several thousand years before it can be applied to anything living – that’s why I had to go seek it in the 47  th  century, after humanity mastered the basics of cellular resizement…”

He caught several confused glares, remembered abruptly that not everybody shared his enthusiasm for odd pieces of alien technology and hastily summed up: “Basically, if she wears it, it will squeeze her huge size into a smaller space.”

“How much smaller?” asked Harry, not daring to hope.

At the same time, Hermione asked instead: “Wear how?”

“Well, see, that’s why I picked that model,” said the Doctor, not really answering either of them. “There are a number of versions shaped in the form of collars or armbands, which would be more practical, and also less ugly; because it is rather ugly, isn’t it?” He contemplated it for a moment with a distracted frown. “I wonder why they never try and improve the design... really, the collars are more beautiful, some are very graceful! The problem is that unfortunately, the compression ratio is limited. Well... I suppose I could try and adapt one – I’m clever like that after all, but it’d be more trouble than it’s worth, smaller models need an outer skin to support the field containment, after all, and you wouldn’t believe the nasty side-effects that can have. Exchange of gases, you see – it builds up within the acquired skin and... let’s just say you’d be glared at in polite company.”

Rose, who by virtue of longer familiarity with the Doctor’s rambling speeches was less dazed than the other listeners, raised a hand to halt him: “Wait, hold on. Outer skin... like the Slitheens?”

“Precisely,” beamed the Doctor.

“Eurgh.”

“Precisely,” he repeated with a smirk.

“Slitheens?” asked Harry warily.

“Criminals from Raxacoricofallapatorius,” said Rose, who never missed a chance to use the complicated name. She shrugged dismissively: “Long story.”

“Still, if she, say, tied it to her biceps or something...” went on the Doctor rather obliviously.

“Does this gizmo of yours have no nasty side effects then?” asked Ron a bit suspiciously.

“Oh, it’s a much more efficient technology!” enthused the Doctor. “Less personal, of course, it’s rather more intended for miniaturizing stuff for transport, you see, works of art, endangered species, that kind of thing - basically it’s like the portable version of a miniscope. Of sorts.”

“What’s a miniscope?” asked Hermione, avidly interested though reluctant to show it.

The Doctor turned to her primly: “Miniscopes are devices that use compression fields to keep specimens inside them miniaturized, living in secure and, well, miniaturized, versions of their natural environments. Like in laboratories, for instances, or zoos. Or peepshows.” His eyes darkened for a moment with the weight of long-past memories.

“That would be brilliant,” said Hermione. “Fortuna could live quite happily, without chance of being discovered…”

“We-eelll… yes, I suppose…” the Doctor grimaced. “Except that specimens extracted from the field resume their original size, so you would have to keep Fortuna caged inside that at all times.”

“I wouldn’t!” said Harry, quite offended.

“I know,” placated the Doctor. “Hence why I didn’t go looking for a miniscope in the first place. Nasty things, when it comes right down to it. I should know, I was trapped in one back in my youth. _Not_ fun. The Time Lords banned such machines – I had a thing or two to say about it myself, but let’s not go there - but the thing is, the technology can be useful too. Imagine miniaturizing doctors for peculiar, high-precision surgeries?” He grinned. “This isn’t anywhere as refined as a miniscope would be, however, no life support circuitry, no audio-visual monitoring system, really it doesn’t do anything much except reduce the size of what it affects. It’s rigged to direct and concentrate the field lines so that nothing but Fortuna will be miniaturized, too!” he finished with enthusiasm.

“You mean you rigged it… or did the Rhodhatnian…?” ventured Rose.

“Oh, the Rhodhatnian did! Came up with it all on their own, about half a century before we bought this. Amazing scientists, there. Very, very into research and also very ecologically conscious. This,” he waved it around, “is set to drastically reduce the size of an endangered species so that it can be moved somewhere safer – that’s what they use it for, over there, for most of the 47th and 48th century. Project Ark, named for ancient Old Earth mythology; saved more than two million species, they did.”

“So… it will make Fortuna smaller?” clarified Harry, touching it tentatively.

“Yup!” the Doctor beamed smugly. “If we’re lucky, it will reduce her to the size of a common housecat!”

“That’s brilliant!” enthused Harry.

“And you said it works on magic?” asked Hermione, still standoffish.

“Yep!” beamed the Doctor, looking quite proud of himself. “Or rather… _will_ work on magic. And beautifully at that, just as soon as I finish a few little touches and one of you powers its charging cycle! Oh, yes!” He crowed happily.

“Why would you want to make a dragon smaller?” asked an innocently confused child’s voice.

The time-travellers jumped, abruptly reminded that they had an audience. They’d quite forgotten it.

A group of Cadets had slowly crept closer and were listening in utter fascination and behind them, several dark faces were staring at them in varying degrees of worry, suspicion and anger.

“That doesn’t make much sense,” insisted the boy, eyes wide and earnest. “Now, if you can make them bigger…!”

“ _Can_ you make them bigger?” asked a short-haired girl next to him avidly.

“Imagine if we could…” – “It would be famous!...” – “The French wouldn’t know what hit them...” – The young ones trailed off in excited babble, but the five time travellers didn’t even try to join their rambling debate. Their focus was on the older aviators, who had gone very, very quiet and were now regarding them with hard, cold expressions.

Rose pressed herself a little closer to the Doctor when she realized that, without them quite noticing, a number of aviators had gathered and were now surrounding them, nonchalantly but surely cutting off every escape route.

“Ah!” said Harry, slightly crestfallen. “Yeah – that’s the _other_ problem.”

“Problem?” repeated Rose leadingly.

Ron sighed exasperatedly: “We can’t leave. Legally we’re part of the Aerial Corps and--”

“Exactly,” said Captain Moreton with dangerous quietness. She pierced the Doctor with a venomous look: “I do not know who or _what_ you are, _sir_ , nor how you appropriated those documents with His Majesty’s signature...”

The Doctor grimaced.

The anger in her eyes seemed to burn more brightly: “...Appearing and disappearing without rhyme or reason, and if that isn't the devil's work than I don't know what is!... You speak of nonsense; nothing but tricks and impossibilities and the devil's own sorcery! I'm of half a mind to strike you down where you stand, just to protect my men,” she half-shouted.

“Now, let's not be hasty...” the Time Lord tried to say, raising his hands in a conciliatory gesture, but murmurs and mutters were already rising around them – “Impostors!” - “Nothing but lies” - “Witchcraft and devilry, no doubt!”

The Doctor rose to his feet and tried for cheerfulness: “Right! Well! If we're not welcome here, then of course we shall go...”

Captain Moreton wasn't finished, however: “Your words make little sense and your intentions are even less clear... _Doctor_ ; but I’ll tell you this, Potter,” she hissed, rounding on the green-eyed young man. “I will not stand by and let you eschew your duty!”

“I thought we were over this?” complained a tall, fair-skinned man, slightly older than Harry, who had pushed himself to the front of the group. He looked at the wizard Captain with reproach and a hint of hurt. “We’re at war, Potter, everyone of us must do their part!...”

Harry ran a hand through his wild hair, sighing in frustration. He knew how everybody else here felt, and truthfully, he understood. He’d fought for his country himself, after all... but that didn’t mean he was ready to give in to their demands; not if he had another option. He’d had quite enough of war in his teenage years; and besides, this wasn’t even his world.

“Need we go over the fate of deserters again?” added an older man with the golden epaulettes of Captaincy, drawing threateningly closer.

The Doctor rubbed his ear, not entirely sure how to handle the situation.

“I don’t know what nation of weak-willed fools you’re from,” said Captain Moreton with quiet dignity. “Because it’s quiet clear you aren’t British.”

“I thought we’d established that I’m a Londoner?” complained Rose in irritation; but she didn't dare speak very loud.

Moreton went on, ignoring her: “But _we_ are and I will not see Britain ruined by cowardice and vileness. I will not see the troops of that Corsican usurper march on our land, pillage our possession and quarter in our homes. And I most certainly will not let foreigners who speak in riddle-filled madness fill our heads with nonsense!” She glared at the blank-faced Doctor, voice rising passionately. “I should have you arrested, I should – appointment by His Majesty or not, I have no idea why we’re even allowing you to--”

“She’s right!” added someone else from their right, fervently. “That vile _Brigand_ shall not conquer us! We shall defend our country, whatever the cost may be – and Potter, you will do your part, same as us all!”

Cheers and insults to Bonaparte went up from all the presents.

“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills…” muttered sarcastically Hermione, who, naturally, knew Churchill’s quotes by heart.

“Good ol’ Winston,” commented the Doctor with a poor attempt at a smile.

“That,” said Captain Moreton steely, shooting an approving glance at the witch, “is exactly what we will do. And so will you!”

“Would have thought you’d be all for getting your part of the glory, Potter,” commented another nastily. He had impeccably groomed black hair and a hateful look in his black eyes. “With the way you show off in the air, you’d think you’d like the attention. Or is it the danger that frightens you? Are you too much of a coward to do it where it counts?”

“Oh, stuff it, Horwan,” grumbled Harry giving him a dark look.

“What is it with you and people thinking you’re a glory hound?” muttered Ron under his breath.

The Doctor’s eyes darkened to a storm. “Do not talk to me of glory in war,” he spat disgustedly. “There isn’t any.”

“But it’s our duty to defend our country!” protested a child, full of innocent self-righteousness.

The Doctor gave him a sad look, even as voices all around them repeated variations of the concept.

“War against the Monster is a necessary evil!” proclaimed a lanky teenager authoritatively, towering over the small crowd from where he'd climbed on a bench and staring at the Doctor in challenge.

“That doesn’t make it any less evil,” replied the Time Lord with unspeakable weariness.

He did not look impressed by the indignant grumblings and derisive contempt of the assembled aviators.

A stubborn child of about ten protested with vehemence: “No, you're wrong. We _have_ to defeat them to show that they’re wrong and we’re right and--”

“Oh, child. War does not determine who is right - only who is left.” He cut off the rising protests with a sharp motion. “No, never mind. It’s none of my business what you choose to fight for, or against. It is, however, my business that you would force someone into it.”

He straightened his spine, that mask of impassivity that scared Rose more than his fury spreading over his face.

Luckily, Hermione had always had a ready mind and the courage to act swiftly – and thus, by virtue of her promptness, they were spared the undoubtedly unpleasant ending to the nasty scene.

While everyone was distracted by the rising conflict, she'd quietly slipped her wand out behind her back and twirled it and swished it expertly, weaving her spells; pointing it sharply to set off the chain of effects she'd prepared, she smiled in satisfaction at the sudden ruckus exploding beyond the nearest wall, loud enough to catch everybody's attention.

Shouts of shock and dismay were heard, swiftly followed by the sudden smell of smoke, stronger than it should be through the thick walls perhaps, and then more sounds of scrambling and traipsing about, of wood crackling, furniture breaking and people screaming: puzzled looks and disorderly questions replaced the disdain and suspicion of a moment before.

Concerned, Rose looked around wildly: “What...? What's wrong, what's happening?”

Quietly, Hermione grasped the Doctor's elbow and muttered: “Nothing. Let's go, quickly.”

The frightening word – _fire!_ \- abruptly came through, loud and clear, albeit in voices that no-one could quite place – but then, they were shouting, so it was perhaps understandable – and the reactions of fear and dismay were swift.

Guessing Hermione's tactic, the Doctor nodded to her and hastened away from the impending pandemonium, urging the bewildered Ron and Harry and almost dragging Rose.

The alarm was being resumed, shouts being taken up and spread further away and even a horn starting to blare somewhere outside; when tendrils of smoke drifted around the edge of the door, in the wake of those who had run to investigate, all the presents panicked.

The reaction were exactly what Hermione had foreseen. She knew very well that in this time, once a fire had gained ground, there was little chance of saving the building. As she had soon found out after being stranded here, there was no centralized fire brigade and a fire was one of the most serious threats these people could face.

Panic was spreading, along with disbelief – the alarm was coming from the direction of the dormitories, how could a fire have spread there? Who could have been so careless – what might have started it? More importantly... how to stop it?

Captain Moreton, not inclined to dawdle in the face of a crisis, was already shouting to array her men in a long line in the corridor and to the nearest well, so that buckets of water could be quickly passed to douse the flames.

While everybody was busy shouting and scrambling to face the emergency, the Doctor pushed the dimension travellers along the quickest escape route.

“Let us through,” he told the few confused and angry aviators in their path with subdued authoritativeness.

As usual, his charisma was such that the five of them made it more than two thirds across the mess hall before anyone even thought of stopping them.

Someone's voice – the man Harry had called Horwan – rose sharply behind them: “Halt! You there! Stop!”

Other cries followed - “Where are you going?” - “They're running away!” - “Wait!” - “You must help!” - “Cowards!”

Without breaking their stride, the Doctor grabbed Rose's hand and ordered sharply: “Run!”

“Shouldn't we help?” protested Rose weakly. “A fire... someone could get hurt...”

The Doctor shot her an affectionate look and Harry started agreeing, his worry clear, but it was Hermione who said tartly: “No-one's going to get hurt. It's not a real fire, just an illusion of one.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Don't worry about the details, let's just make good on our escape!” counselled Ron, who was trying to smother a grin.

“You _simulated_ a fire?” yelped Rose, almost stumbling in her run because she was twisting to try and stare at the witch.

“She's brilliant, isn't she?” crowed Ron.

“Ron!” protested Harry, alarmed. “God, Hermione, they'll panic--”

“I don’t care,” Hermione cut him off brusquely. “This isn’t our war – it isn’t even our _world_.”

“I know, but...”

“Later!” cut in the Doctor. “The Tardis is this way. Hurry!”

They started running full out to the nearby glen where the Tardis had landed, but Harry was distraught and distracted. “Wait...!” he tried in a sickly voice, slowing down.

“No time, Harry!” yelled Hermione sharply. “Move!”

“I have to find Fortuna!” cried Harry, quite panicked.

“Don't worry, I've got it sorted!” shouted the Doctor and grabbed Harry's shoulder, propelling him forward.

“But Fortuna...”

“We'll get her,” the Doctor reassured him.

Sounds of pursuits were at last rising behind them, the pounding of footsteps and confused, hostile cries: “There!”- “It's them!” - “Stop them!” - and, more worrisome, variations of: “They did it!” - “Traitors!” - “ _French_!”

At least, there didn't seem to be any dragon involved: they were probably too far out on the training grounds to quickly realize the situation.

Well used to this kind of flight, the three magicians had little trouble in throwing a few spells over their shoulders, to slow down their pursuers, without breaking their pace (which, unfortunately, garnered them a few cries of "Devils!" too); as for the Doctor and Rose, they weren't even out of breath when they all burst through the Tardis doors with a good lead over their pursuers.

The Doctor started the dematerialization sequence at once, refusing to look at any of them. Rose could still see the shadow of a haunted look in his eyes and forced herself to smile even more brightly than usual: “Well, that went well!”

That drew a half-smile from him, at least.

“You call that going well?” snorted Hermione.

“We're all accounted for. Also, so're our limbs,” pointed out Rose reasonably.

The half-smile bloomed into a full one.

Ron stifled a guffaw and even Hermione sported a reluctant grin; Rose felt very pleased with herself. Unfortunately, Harry didn't seem inclined to see any humour – or even any relief – in the situation.

“We're not _all_ accounted for!” he raged. “Fortuna's still out there!”

The sounds of the Tardis rose around them, a crescendo of trumpeting blares, and he turned around and around, frantic. “What are you doing? Wait! WAIT! We can't leave – Fortuna!” he yelled, pale and wild.

“Yes, yes, of course,” muttered the Doctor, who'd abandoned the controls and was now busy with his sonic screwdriver and... something made of wires and metal. He barely looked up: “We're going for her, Harry. Just give me a moment – weelll... I say a moment... more like half an hour, I should think...”

He trailed off, working deftly on whatever was holding his attention and periodically rooting inside his pockets for this and that.

“What do you need half an hour for?” shouted the wizard, incensed.

“The... reducer, thingy,” guessed Rose quietly and the Doctor spared her a sharp nod, before producing the giant peanut-shaped item and applying his screwdriver to connect some of the wires in his hands.

That quieted Harry somewhat, but he was still pale and fretting.

“But what is she going to do, all alone for so long? What will she think?” he paced in worry.

Hermione tried to soothe him: “Harry, don't worry. It's not that long... I'm sure everything will be fine...”

“No, you don't understand!” retorted the wizard, subdued and anxious. “They will go for her straight away. That's how things go – you capture the Captain to control the Dragon, and you capture the Dragon to control the Captain! And even if... - but what will she _think_? They'll tell her all sorts of... of... and she'll have no way to know it's nonsense – and – and – and we're here, safe and sound, and who knows what she's going through!”

“About that,” interrupted the Doctor with forced cheerfulness. “I think, under the circumstances, it might be advisable to, perhaps, bend the rules a little bit.”

After a moment, Rose ventured: “What?”

“A tiny little bit. Insignificant, really.”

By now, they were all staring at him expectantly.

“Right!” he exclaimed, straightening. “Here's the plan. I'm going to bring us back a half-hour into the past, and you,” he pointed to Harry dramatically, “are going to steal Fortuna away before we get them all so upset at us.”

“...What?!”

The only voice outside the squeaking chorus was Harry himself, who suddenly looked mighty pleased: “Good plan!” he agreed, beaming.

The Doctor beamed brightly back, though it didn't really reach his eyes, and he ignored both Rose rolling her eyes and Hermione trying to lecture her friend. None of her misgivings could convince the wizard that the plan was not an excellent one and Ron, when applied to, just shrugged.

So it was that the Doctor carefully piloted them in the right place (and time), while Harry familiarized himself with the jiggery-pokered 'reducer' – he was confident that he could use it, and charge it again on his own later on.

The Doctor danced around the console with his usual chatter, but none of his usual cheerfulness. Rose caught his eyes and tried smiling at him, but it didn't seem to do much good.

“I shall land us while you're coming in to meet us,” he told Harry. “Now, remember. You can't--”

“--let me see myself, yes, I know. I actually have done this before, you know.”

The Doctor's eyebrows rose in shock: “You what?!?”

Harry smiled fleetingly: “Ask me sometimes, about Fiercebeak and Sirius, ok?” Then he opened the Tardis doors a crack, peering out. “I see myself – I'm just leaving the courtyard. I should stop to give the satchel to Bolson... right... now...”

A few tense moments later, he nodded decisively and slipped out, device in hand.

Silence fell over the console room.

Hermione had hit Harry's back with a swift little charm as he was going out and Ron and she were now bent over what looked like a piece of parchment, observing it with the same attention the Doctor was giving his monitors.

There was an unspoken tension in the way they carefully didn't look at each other.

Rose felt uncomfortable and didn't know how to tease the Doctor out of his still sombre mood, nor could she see a way to gently push him into confiding in her, for with the two magicians there to watch them, she did not dare mention The War.

“This is odd,” said the Doctor abruptly. He was frowning at some readings, spectacles perched on his nose.

“What is it?” asked Rose, coming closer. She was secretly relieved that something – anything – might break the tense silence and half-hoped it turned out to be an alien invasion.

“I'm monitoring the time ebbs in the area to ensure removing Fortuna goes smoothly, but looking at these readings, I think we could come close to skirting a paradox and it wouldn't matter. There is _quite_ the large temporal distortion here nearby!”

He looked up at her, sliding his spectacles off: “Well – I say nearby...” he half-smiled again and she was immensely relieved to see it was slightly more lighthearted.

She smiled back, slowly and teasingly: “Shall we investigate?”

“Indeed we shall!”

“What about Harry and Fortuna?” interjected Hermione, alarmed.

The doors opened right then and all turned to see Harry stagger in, holding a big, golden-coloured bundle, which was loudly grumbling even as he closed the door with his back, collapsing against it.

The dragon looked smaller than she had at her hatching, but also much more adult. Her voice was deep and pure like a sonorous bronze bell. And clearly irritated.

Judging from her constant stream of grumbling and berating, she was quite put out at her suddenly reduced size!

“Hello, there! Welcome to the Tardis!” cried the Doctor exuberantly.

He watched her with his hands in his trousers pockets, beaming too brightly and rocking slightly on the balls of his feet. Fortuna stopped complaining, gaping at the Doctor for a long moment before she was overcome by an unexpected bout of shyness and greeted him quietly.

A moment later, however, her natural curiosity burst forth with irrepressible force and she jumped off Harry's arms, flying fitfully all around the console room, nosing curiously in every nook and cranny, like a giant, goldish bat. The light of the pumping rotor caressed her, bringing out the pale green stripes on her scales like gleaming strings of jewels.

The string of complaints she'd made her entrance with had by now turned into a stream of curious questions, rattled off almost too fast to hope for any answer but in such a cheerful tone as to be quite amusing. The curiosity she'd been born with hadn't abated in the least over the months.

She certainly wasn't inclined to be quiet.

The Doctor watched her indulgently, letting Harry attempt to answer at least one question in five and just ensuring that anything potentially destructive was discreetly swept out of sight before she could get around to it.

After a brief interval, Hermione coughed meaningfully: “Can we go now?”

“Oh! Yes, of course!” exclaimed the Doctor, suddenly recollecting himself. He turned to Harry with an eager grin, confiding: “We're off to investigate suspicious readings – hold on to your hats!”

“What? No! You're supposed to take us home!” shrieked Hermione.

“Yes, yes,” said the Doctor distractedly. “Just as soon as we've solved this... whatever this is.”

“No, I don't care about your - 'this'. I've had enough of this time! You take us home or so help me!...”

“But don't you see! It's... it's timey-wimey!” protested the Doctor earnestly.

Rose and Harry snickered – and then it turned into a full-blown laugh at Hermione's unbelieving gaping.

Fortuna shrieked in delight at the Tardis' less than steady landing.

“So... how nearby is 'nearby'?” asked Rose curiously – with the Doctor, you could never know.

“A few counties and a handful of months?” he said, with nonchalance belied by the glint in his eyes. “We're still in England, and it's January of 1806 – Fortuna will hatch soon.”

He made for the doors, quickly followed by the small dragon, whose attention had been caught by the mention of her name.

“Hold on, shouldn't we dress a little more... time-appropriately?” Rose stopped him, gesturing haphazardly to her usual jeans and hoodie. “I mean, I know nobody said anything back there, but I did see the looks – if we're to investigate we should try to fit in, shouldn't we?”

“Ro-ose!” whined the Doctor at once. “You'll take forever to change!”

“Oh, here!” huffed Hermione exasperatedly. With quick, deft wand movements, she lengthened and twisted Rose's hoodie and changed it into a soft, wool day dress. Nothing very fancy, but it would pass muster in the times they found themselves in. Without pause, she turned to the Doctor and his beloved suit was unceremoniously turned into a tailcoat-breeches combination and – horror of horrors – boots.

The Doctor gaped in outrage. “What did you do!” he yelled.

Snickering from Harry and Ron did nothing to quail his indignation.

Rose couldn't quite smother her own chuckle, nor hide her appreciation: “You look like Mr. Darcy,” she said, personally admitting that it rather suited him.

“You could have given me buckskins!” he whined. “I'd forgotten how uncomfortable breeches are. How can I possibly have liked to wear this?”

“What?” laughed Rose. “Seriously?”

He shot her an embarrassed look: “Ah, well... I was young and foolish. Anyway!”

Recovering all his exuberance, he marched towards the door – but after a few steps he grimaced again and rounded on Hermione: “No. Just, no. The waistcoat, I'll accept; I'll bear with the cravat; I'll even wear gloves. But give me back my trainers!”

Laughter exploded in the room, until Hermione relented.

Still snickering softly, Harry gave the small dragon, who'd landed on the floor, a bow, gesturing that she should follow them out: “Well, Fortuna... As Dumbledore would have said: let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure."

“Excellent sentiment, Captain Potter! Excellent indeed!” beamed the Doctor.

And with that, they were out.

It wasn't night, as it turned out, but rather a cold, crisp mid-morning. A chilly wind was sweeping the area, making their eyes sting and water; the greyish light of a cloudy day muted most colours.

They found themselves at the top of a hill, which gave them a beautiful eagle's eye view over a vast and varied park: but their eyes were almost instantly caught by the spectacular manor house, towering not to far away, backed by a ridge of high woody hills.

“Wollaton Hall!” exclaimed the Doctor happily. “Oh, I remember spending a winter here – when was that again? Lovely rhubarb jam at breakfast. Not in this time, though – early Victorian age, rather... Of course, it wasn't _this_ Wollaton Hall either, but still! Isn't it beautiful?” He started off towards the impressive mansion, prattling in a pleased tone: “It was originally designed by Robert Smythson and built for Sir Francis Willoughby, assuming it's the same here, obviously, and it was completed following eight years of building work in 1588 - the year of the Spanish Armada, now _that_ was quite something, I tell you...”

Rose let him go on in his usual style, while filling her own eyes with the beautiful view. The building was rather flamboyant in her opinion, and certainly over the top as a _home_ , but also very striking.

It was a large, handsome, stone building, square and tall, with a central tower and pleasing turrets upon both lateral wings, and a harmonious, symmetrical façade decorated by thin columns and an impressive number of mullioned windows.

Rose had seen other place such as this, both on Earth and elsewhere, but she admitted to herself that this was one of the finest – and the gardens looked to be just as pretty. She was particularly delighted by how there was very little apparent intervention over the nature, beyond what was needed for the house itself and the road leading to it. She had never been able to appreciate the forced and awkward luxuries so typical of the classes that resided in such places, but here, the place was neither formal, nor falsely adorned and she very much approved.

Harry didn't seem to share her appreciation – she heard him mutter something uncomplimentary about white peacocks, which made Ron burst into laughter – but Fortuna soon distracted them all with a barrage of questions.

They descended the hill and strode to the house, chatting amiably.

Hermione had caught up with the Doctor and was avidly listening to his recounting of the house's history – “...and after the fire in 1642 it was extensively remodelled, the interior that is, the outside is still exactly as it was built, but I never saw it then, when I visited, in the mid-19 th  century, it had already been radically redesigned by Sir Jeffry Wyatville...”

Rose and the boys weren't interested in the history lesson and instead preferred to talk about their experience in a world filled with dragons.

As they moved closer to the manor, however, they became more and more aware that something was wrong.

It wasn't anything overt; just a feeling of gloom and of dustiness, in spite of the clear wintry day: yet everything looked well-kept and grass, leaves and spider webs sparkled dully where the dew gleamed on them.

Trying to look at things like the Doctor would, hoping to spot an inconsistency that might point them in the direction of the 'disturbance', Rose scanned the garden slowly.

Nothing seemed amiss. There was a dusting of snow on the grass, that had already melted into grey mud on the pathways – Rose frowned: shouldn't there be frost rather than dew, then? And was that an abandoned spade, with droplets on it? She wasn't sure dew was supposed to happen on metal. It didn't on the slides of the playground back home, did it?

Then again, she was a city girl; despite travelling to many a rural place with the Doctor, she wouldn't exactly trust herself to know how dew worked.

The others were still chattering away happily and didn't appear concerned with anything on sight. With a deep sigh, Rose admitted to herself that she might be trying to find what simply wasn't there...

The Doctor didn't hesitate in striding up to the main entrance. He cheerfully explained that it was quite common for visitors to wish a tour of such country houses and it would be the best way to investigate.

“See, if we're gentlefolk, we'll be able to talk to the family, if necessary; if we're not guests, we'll be able to talk to the servants, if we need to – the best place to find answers is with the servants,” he added sagely.

Memories of being a dinner lady, not to mention a server in her own (sort of) parents' house, dancing in her mind, Rose rolled her eyes in a very unimpressed manner.

She frowned again, lagging behind.

The discrete dots of light that looked like beads of dew made the patches of ground and bare branches look greyer and more barren than a rose garden should be, even outside the season of flowers; there was a surprising amount of spider webs gracing the wilting bushes, evanescent in the slight breeze.

She studied them more closely, unsure whether they were meant to be there and in such a large number. Were roses good places for spiders to hunt? She doubted her biology class would have given her the answer, even had she paid any attention to it. Had they even covered spiders and rose bushes?

“Rose!” called the Doctor impatiently and she shook herself: “Coming!”

The housekeeper appeared: a respectable-looking, elderly woman, with a sharp gaze and polite, but cold, manners. Her disapproving gaze fell unerringly on Fortuna: “What, pray tell, is that?” she demanded with clear dislike.

“Oh!... That's just a... a pet! Yes!”

Her cool disapproval transferred solidly to the Doctor, who was beaming far too brightly and trying to shush Fortuna's outraged yelps.

“She's very well behaved,” assured Harry meekly. At her coolly disapproving gaze, which reminded him unsettlingly of Madam Pince, the Librarian at Hogwarts, Harry hurriedly mumbled something about waiting outside and dragged a protesting shrunken dragon with him.

Rose saw the complaining Fortuna falter at the edge of the lawn as if she was entangled in an invisible fabric; but it only lasted a moment and no-one else appeared to have noticed, not even the dragon. She blinked rapidly to clear her vision, but could not decide if the speckles of light that she'd seen dancing along a web around Fortuna's legs were real or not.

“Err... yes.” Oblivious, the Doctor coughed lightly to cover his embarrassment. “About the visit?”

The Housekeeper coolly informed them that only a portion of the house was open, for the family was in residence. The Doctor recovered his enthusiasm and promptly put his foot in his mouth, causing undue offence by asking her after the Willoughby family.

She drew herself up like a peacock: “This has been the seat of the Earl of Allendale for generations! What do you mean, by coming along with questions of those honour-less gamblers! They have nothing to do with us!” she snapped, and she turned their back on them rigidly, leading the way to the nearest room.

The Doctor's eyebrows climbed so high on his forehead as to be quite comical.

They followed her into the dining-parlour. It was a large, well-proportioned room, handsomely fitted up. There was a similar one after that. And then a music room, just as nicely furnished. And a drawing room, and another...

Rose couldn't help a little sigh: stuffy old mansions weren't really her thing, not even when they weren't old, nor stuffy.

Then she narrowed her eyes: the Doctor was wearing his geeky specs and looking out of a window thoughtfully.

She sidled up to him: "Could this be what you're looking for? The different family? I mean, we're looking for something out of place, right? But I know this is a different universe and all... maybe the changes depend on that..."

"Yeah. No. Yes." The Doctor was frowning into the distance. "Surprisingly enough, the history of this world seems to be progressing more or less the same as our original one. Apparently a huge lizard-like species as co-dominant on Earth doesn't have that much of an impact on human history... Fancy that." He smiled boyishly.

Since Rose didn't stop frowning, he added: “This is just a minor thing, Rose; whatever's happening here, it's not the family name that matters.”

“You sure?”

“I've been tuning my senses to this universe's timelines since we arrived, Rose. I'm sure.”

She smiled back, flirtatiously. “You think you're so impressive.”

“I am so impressive!” he cried, grinning widely at the familiar exchange.

He blithely ignored Hermione snorting loudly and the Housekeeper's pointed throat-clearing and took off his glasses with a delighted coo over some coat of arms or other, effectively distracting the stern woman.

Ron came up to Rose, cynically muttering that the amount of gold for gilding alone could pay for a Hogwarts education, and she stifled a grin: the rooms were indeed lofty and rather gaudy, with little of the elegance of the grounds and a lot of ostentatious splendour.

Trying not to show how bored she was, she glanced out the windows with a quiet huff. Then she focused. Speckles of light again. And spider webs, _again_ , glinting in the sun even though it was actually covered by clouds.

That wasn't normal, was it?

And they looked odd anyway – not that she could see all that well from this far. It was a bit like those games where you could look at a vase and suddenly see two faces: one moment she could make out criss-crossing threads of the lightest fabric, the next there was nothing to see.

She supposed there were many kinds of spiders in the world and she certainly wasn't an expert, but she couldn't shake the feeling that there was something weird at play. Maybe she should point out to the Doctor that...

But a moment later she lost the train of thought because of a terrified scream from somewhere below them, followed by more indistinct cries.

She exchanged an excited look with the Doctor: now that was more like it!

They ran, down back stairs and through bare corridors in stark contrast with the rooms upstairs, the Doctor leading them unerringly as was typical for him, and just as typically ignoring both the Housekeeper's indignation and the few servants who tried to stop him (but were more interested in following him to the source of the commotion anyway).

Secretly relieved that the tour was derailed, Rose pounded after him with a wide grin and they barged into the kitchen to find a short, rotund man in breeches, red in the face, standing in front of a wide wood fireplace with three small fires and various pots swinging from cranes; he was shaking his fist at a certain golden dragonet, who was perched loftily on the huge table in the middle of the room, heedless of the serving plates and sauce bowls she was upsetting.

A bell was ringing impatiently, unheeded; a very young scullery maid was holding a long iron poker rather shakily and an even younger boy streaked with coal and dirt was cowering behind her, wide-eyed; two older maids with pristine white aprons were cowering on the other side of the huge room, looking frightened; Harry, hands outstretched and green coat swishing madly, was trying unsuccessfully to calm everybody down, but not even Fortuna was paying him any attention.

With the four of them, the outraged Housekeeper and various servants spilling into the room, all of them talking loudly over each other, even the vast kitchen started to feel cramped; and the situation was not helped when two gardeners and a corpulent coachman barged in, holding daisy grubbers and a crop; then a tall footman, followed by yet more housemaids; then an imposing man who Rose guessed was the butler, loudly demanding answers - and just how many people lived and worked here?

She tried to stifle herself, she really did, but when a woman who, by the looks of her fine, lavender dress, was probably the lady of the house, appeared with her lady's maid in tow, sending nervous ripples of movement among the crowded servants, and stopped short to gape unbecomingly at the shrunken dragon upon the table, Rose just couldn't help it: she burst out laughing.

Oddly enough, her outburst quieted the room and everybody turned perplexed or scandalized eyes to her; only the Doctor's chuckle joined her free laughter in the sudden silence.

Rose forced herself to regain some seriousness (really, had she learned nothing from Queen Victoria's lack of humour?) but honestly, it was like a Benny Hill sketch!

While she gulped down air, everybody seemed to reach some sort of conclusion at the same time, with the result that for a few moments, confusion reigned.

The housekeeper was furious at the unseemly display and shrilly trying to corral her subordinates to the servants' room; the butler, filled with consternation that the upset had attracted the lady of the house, was reprimanding Harry and demanding that the dragon be removed, but with scarce success, while the women were chittering with nervousness and excitement and the men making a show of bravado; and all the timetravellers were talking over each other, especially Hermione, who seemed galvanized by the tittering disapproval of their behaviour and kept smoothing down her dress in a nervous gesture and babbling excuses.

Rose just pressed her hands against her mouth to stifle her bubbling laughter: the utter chaos and widespread disapproval were threatening to send her into peals of laugher all over again!

The poor lavender-clad lady looked completely out of place in her own kitchen.

Nevertheless, she made a valiant effort to regain control, despite the Doctor's rambling half-awing half-scaring everybody.

“That is enough!” she exclaimed authoritatively. She straightened and clapped her hands sharply, gaining the attention of whole the room at last; she looked elegant and determined, even though her attempt towards composure was visibly taking effort.

Everybody huddled somewhat and quieted, including Fortuna, and even the Doctor coughed embarrassedly.

“I would very much like to have an explanation,” she said with quiet dignity.

That seemed to subdue everybody even more and the butler straightened, taking a step forward but seemingly unable to articulate a word.

Of course, the Doctor couldn't be cowed for long and he bounced back with forced exuberance: “Right! Yes! Explanations. And introductions!”

Hastily and haphazardly, he managed to somewhat justify away their presence to their rather appalled audience; Hermione and Ron jumped in to attempt to smooth things over, offering apologies and placating banalities, while Harry focused on getting Fortuna down from the table.

None of it gained them much credit with the gathered crowd, but the gentlewoman who was, indeed, the lady of the manor – the wife of the eleventh Earl of Allendale, as it turned out – was too well-bred to call them on their uncertain social graces and far more unruffled by Fortuna's presence than any of them expected.

“I rather think the help should return to their duties,” she said stiffly, then offered uncertainly: “Shall we adjourn to the parlour?”

“Oh, yes! Excellent idea. Allons-y!” cried the Doctor, as was his wont.

It froze the room.

“What?” he asked, honestly baffled.

It was the coachmen who asked, venomously: “Was that... French?”

“What?” the Doctor yelped.

“What you said,” a footmen insisted, lifting his chin. “Was that French?”

“Are _you_ French?”

The tension in the room spiked so suddenly Rose imagined she could feel it on her skin. She prudently stepped closer to the Doctor. Cries of "Spies!" rose and the Doctor groaned loudly: “Oh, not _again_...!”

Chaos erupted once more – the ongoing war making people nervous at any hint of Frenchness – and things threatened to spiral out of control when the coachman actually got in the Doctor's face.

“I know what I heard. That was French, that was!”

“Urgh, why must humans always be so near-sighted!?”

Rose and Ron grabbed the Time Lord's shoulders firmly to hold him back.

“That's enough!” repeated Lady Allendale decisively, quieting the objections but not really silencing them. “Please follow me at once,” she told the Doctor pointedly.

“My Lady!” protested the butler. “That is not prudent!...”

But she was already marching towards the staircase.

Fortuna jumped after her, with her neck and tail straight and haughty as any cat, making the servants in her path scatter like birds. It provoked another wave of outrage and dismay from the staff, but Lady Allendale, while obviously taken aback by the small dragon, didn't look too concerned and simply led the way upstairs; the timetravellers hurried to follow.

The butler and two footmen did the same, hovering closely with suspicions and baleful glares, especially towards the Doctor and Harry, but the latter did his best to ignore them; as for the Time Lord, he ranted softly all the while about humans and their blindness and petty concerns with fancy headgear and, for some reason that escaped Rose, someone named Bertand's warfare skills and someone named Henry's inability to leave well enough alone.

They repaired to the parlour at last and Lady Allendale determinedly sent the servants off to see about tea and refreshments, though the butler refused to leave her with these potentially dangerous and definitely odd visitors.

Fortuna jumped to perch on a small table and Harry coloured and hurried to force her down, under the Lady's hesitant scrutiny.

“I did not know dragons could be so small,” she commented, eyeing the dragonet uncertainly. “Is it a hatchling?”

“Something like that,” Harry said quickly, overriding Fortuna's indignant yelps.

“You are familiar with dragons?” asked Ron, surprised. “I didn't think many civilians knew much about them.”

“I have lately come to know more than I am comfortable with about the Aerial Corps,” she allowed. “My own son, William Laurence, is a dragon's Captain.”

“Laurence!” exclaimed Harry, dropping Fortuna to the floor and smiling with eager delight. “ _The_ Captain Laurence? On Temeraire?”

“Yes,” said Lady Allendale softly.

“Oh, but he's a hero! They both are!” exclaimed Ron, with the enthusiasm he usually reserved for the Chudley Cannons. “Everybody talks about them, how they saved the day at Dover, defeated the French flying ships and all!”

She just sighed: “That may be, but I am afraid my husband disapproves of William's choices and career,” she said sadly. “He is quite convinced that my son is shaming the name by his actions and attitude and is quite bitter about it. It was difficult enough for him to accept William's choice to join the Navy, instead of accepting a career in the Church as he was expected to; but the Aviation?” She shook her head. “I could not even write him openly after he joined the Aerial Corps – Lord Allendale would not allow it. He has relented somewhat now that my William and his charming dragon are hailed as heroes, after the Battle of Dover; but he still refuses to receive him here at Wollaton.” She sighed in sorrow.

"Wish I could meet him," said Ron wistfully. "He's in China, now, isn't he?"

Harry, more suspiciously than was warranted perhaps, asked: “And what is _your_ opinion of us aviators and dragons, Lady Allendale?”

“I do not mind the creatures so much anymore,” she answered slowly. “I confess I was rather frightened at first, when my son insisted I met his dragon; but Temeraire is such a polite and intelligent beast, I was quite charmed. He obviously cares deeply for my son, and is well-loved in return.”

Harry bristled a little, but she didn't notice.

“Would you believe he managed to get my William interested in reading books? Something I must confess I had no success with, myself!” Lady Allendale smiled.

Hermione snorted something uncomplimentary about boys and their lack of study ethics and the Lady's smile widened.

She quickly sobered: “But enough of this, please!” she exclaimed. “I would rather hear how and why you came to find yourselves in my kitchens!”

“Ah... yes...”

Half-guilty glances were exchanged, before they set about piecing together an awkward explanation.

It turned out that Fortuna and her Captain, far from staying quietly in the front garden, had managed to make their way to a back courtyard and from there, to the kitchens, accidentally terrifying the cook and scullery maids in the process and raising alarm in the household.

And why had they done so?

“We were following the dog!” chimed Fortuna happily.

“The dog?” The Doctor's eyebrows rose in surprise.

Lady Allendale, on the other hand, frowned: “A dog? Are you certain? That sounds somewhat improbable.” She nodded elegantly to the silently glowering butler. “Greyson tells me all of our foxhounds had to be sent away in the last few days.”

The Doctor was extremely interested “Sent away? Why? What was wrong with them?”

“They kept panting, whining, making nuisances of themselves,” explained the butler stiffly. “Most uncommon – they are extremely well trained and have never before behaved like that. Why, they even attempted to escape!”

Lady Allendale added almost absently: “My eldest son is terribly put out. He was to host a hunting party in two weeks, but under the circumstances... Everybody will be moving to London sooner than expected; a major disappointment, as with the war going on, there is so little occasion for such entertainments anymore...”

“Explains why the dog looked like a shaggy tramp,” commented Harry thoughtfully. “It was probably a stray.”

“Why, exactly, did you follow a stray dog when you were supposed to wait for us?” asked Hermione disapprovingly.

“It looked like it was in pain,” replied Harry almost defensively. “It kept whining and shaking its head and making plaintive noises.”

“Vibrations!” exclaimed the Doctor triumphantly.

Everybody turned to him in silent question.

“Dogs can hear sounds over a wider range of frequencies and a greater distance than humans, or even dragons,” he elaborated. “That's why you should never vacuum with a dog around, it would be painful for them.

“Vacuum?” asked Lady Allendale, sounding lost.

The Doctor ignored her, pacing around with a bounce in his step: “The human hearing range is from 20Hz to 20kHz. Most lizard species pick up sounds in the 500Hz to 4kHz range, very narrow margin, although of course, they make up for it with their ability to respond to groundborne vibrations. But dogs? The range of hearing for dogs is 40kHz – it's even better than _mine_. Plus, they have the ability to move their ears independently, so that one ear can locate the sound and both ears can then catch the maximum number of sound waves. Mightily useful, that,” he commented chirpily.

Hermione summarized briskly: “So, we can detect more or less the same amount of low pitched sounds as dogs, but not nearly as many high pitched sounds, which renders our hearing less acute.”

“Precisely!”

“Are you an expert on animal behaviour, then?” marvelled Lady Allendale.

The Doctor shot her a smile: “Oh, I'm an expert on more or less everything.”

The wizards snorted, but didn't comment.

“Okay,” nodded Rose, with a slight frown of concentration. “Then the question is: what is making high pitched noises around here, that's driving the dogs mad? And does it have anything to do with the spiderwebs?”

“Spiderwebs? What spiderwebs?” asked the Doctor, perplexed.

“Well, they're everywhere!” Rose defended herself. “Been meaning to tell you...”

“Oh, Merlin, _no_ ,” groaned Harry in dismay. “You think it's _them_ again?” he asked Ron.

The redhead grimaced. “Dunno. Wait. What about horses?” he asked abruptly. “How's a horse hearing?”

“Oh, much keener than humans. Not as good as a dog, but almost,” assured the Doctor. “Horses can hear low to very high frequency sound, in the range of 14 Hz to 25 kHz. Which... is more or less what I can hear, actually.”

“Why do you ask?” interjected Hermione, to distract Lady Allendale from the Doctor's ill-timed comments on his non-humanness.

Ron and Harry gave her meaningful glances: “Remember when the horses at the Covert started panicking for no reason?”

“Wait, you know what's going on?” asked Rose curiously.

The two wizards shared a look: “We think so,” they chorused.

“That again?” asked Hermione incredulously, finally catching on.

“Yeah,” Harry sighed. “Apparently we didn't deal with it as well as we'd thought...”

“Deal with what?” asked the Doctor, thrown.

“You really know what this is all about?” asked Rose, impressed.

“Sort of,” Harry tried to explain. “We got roped into solving a bit of a mystery a while back – long story short, there were spiders involved.”

“ _Big_ spiders,” whined Ron, gloomily. “Why does it always have to be spiders!”

“Why would spiders be a problem for dogs? Or humans, for that matter?” interjected Lady Allendale, who wasn't having much luck trying to understand her perplexing visitors.

“Never mind Ron,” Hermione said fondly. “He's got a problem with arachnids; but I admit, these were definitely, er... big.”

Harry half-smiled: “Yeah, not as huge as Acromantulas but pretty impressive anyway – and blue to boot.”

“Blue spiders!” exclaimed the Doctor, perking up. “Must have been Naralians.”

He whipped out his sonic screwdriver and twiddled with it, before moving it in a wide arch out of the window.

A cascade of rainbow reflexes gleamed from an intricate web of delicate, barely-visible threads spread all over the courtyard.

Lady Allendale gasped in wonder; Hermione muttered sulkily about it taking her _ages_ to get the same effect with magic.

“That's it! They're everywhere – out in front too!” exclaimed Rose. “What are they?”

“From what we've seen, they use those,” Harry said, gesturing to the stretched and translucent web scattered all over, “to move around – looks kind of like flying on rails.”

“Indeed they do!” cried the Doctor delightedly. “They've got this whole fascinating transport system built on their own physiological capability of ballooning.”

“Of what?” laughed Rose.

“I'll take you to visit their planet, it's utterly beautiful, although not as beautiful as Rrash, which is in the same system but further out from their main sun and has gorgeous salty planes where the soil changes colours with each of their three dawns, Rarog only gets the one dawn, because it is so much closer to their sun, but it has entire forests of tall bushes ripe with the oddest berries.”

Rose decided to cut the ramble off: “So they're big, blue, flying spiders?”

“Not flying, not really. It just looks like that, especially if you can't see the webs. It's like a rainfall of blue, spiderlike balloons. The first time I saw it I was _convinced_ they were flying, but it's really just gliding along those complex web of silk threads. It's jaw-dropping,” told them the Doctor.

Harry nodded: “We haven't seen that many, but yeah... yeah, it is.”

“Where do they come from?” asked Lady Allendale tremulously. “Has a ship inadvertently brought them back from a faraway land? Are we facing an infestation?”

Paying her no mind, the Doctor went on enthusiastically lecturing about the Naralians: “In the their distant past, they would just lie on their web and wait for the strong winds of their homeworld to pick it up and transport it, letting themselves float to the ground at the end of the trip. But looking at this, I'd say they're already at the stage when they've harnessed the winds and turned the silkways into a stable web of transports.”

He beamed brightly. “It was a major revolution in their culture! Very exciting times. In less than a generation they covered the entire planet in the silkway web, leaving no corner unexplored. By the time the inventors of the silkway web were grandfathers, it had united them under a single government and spurred an economic bloom that evolved into one of the greatest artistic and cultural golden age of their entire history. Oh! We should go see one of their performances! They're great thespians, they are. We'd need a perception filter, they don't take kindly to off-worlders, think we're demons sent to prevent them from being born into their version of heaven, almost got myself and Peri killed last time I went there, but their winddances are so amazingly beautiful!”

“What absurd wonders do you speak of!” marvelled Lady Allendale, looking in equal parts intrigued and frightened.

The Doctor winced. “Never mind,” he muttered with a fake smile. “Moving on.”

“What are they doing here?” asked Rose practically. “I mean, what do they want?”

“We couldn't really figure that out,” admitted Hermione. “But I took notes...”

Out of apparently nowhere she produced a notebook that appeared to be filled with pages of observations and annotations. It took Rose, who by now was used to the Doctor's bigger-on-the-inside pockets, a few moments to remember that Hermione shouldn't have been able to do this, but she just shook her head in wonder. Magic, indeed!

“That's all very well and good, Hermione, but it doesn't really matter,” said Harry impatiently, preventing her from even starting her lecture.

While the witch rounded on him, ready to unleash her indignation, Fortuna took it upon herself to push the conversation forward: “Yeah, the important bit is, when people get caught in those webs? They get _eaten_ ,” she said, in a far too enthusiastic tone.

Lady Allendale gave a soft cry, echoed by her butler. She was as pale as a ghost and clearly fighting her own fear.

“My Lady! We must kill them at once, then!” exclaimed Greyson.

“Yes, indeed,” she determined, but with a waver in her voice.

“Now, let's not be hasty...” frowned the Doctor, irritated.

“Hasty!” she protested. “I rather think we're wasting time, instead. We cannot allow such monsters to attack us!”

“Who said anything about monsters?” protested the Doctor.

“I think she's sort of right, Doctor,” grimaced Harry, while Ron nodded along.

“They're nasty,” added Fortuna haughtily.

“There's no need for violence! Honestly, humans. Can't think beyond bashing heads in with clubs. If we reverse their arrival mode, we can send them back to their homeworld and that'll be it. Nice and easy! And no needless killing!”

“They're the ones who've started with the killing!” muttered Ron darkly.

The Time Lord rounded on him, looking furious, but Lady Allendale wasn't having any of his nonsense: “I am not so ignorant as to be unable to decipher your strange words, Doctor. Tell me, do these monsters really belong to another world?”

“Er... something like that,” he admitted, lamely.

She frowned, fear growing in her gaze: “How are they here, then? And why should we not fight them? You speak of sending them away, but if they came once, what will stop them from coming back again?”

“We-ell,” frowned the Doctor, his anger slightly derailed. “I actually have no idea. In our universe, they never developed any way off their planet. Something about their religious myths centering on the sky being the eggshell of the world, only to be pierced by their birth into a higher state of existence, or in our words, dying. They never even thought of it, that I know of. Guess it's different here...”

“When we tracked them down before, the web centered and was anchored around a... hole, of sorts, made of light,” said Harry. “Felt like the moment when you get hooked by a portkey when you got close – minus the trip, though.”

“A wormhole,” said Hermione authoritatively, whipping out a different portion of her notes; then she faltered, under the focused attention she'd garnered: “That is, I mean, I-- it's what I always imagined a wormhole would be like. From the movies and such.” She coloured.

The Doctor sniffed: “Movies always get it wrong. But, oh! A wormhole, that would explain everything! I guess they decided it wasn't against their belief to travel that way, since it doesn't, technically, pierce the sky. A difference such as this would radically alter their entire culture, not to mention history. It is not inconceivable that it would turn a peaceful and reclusive, if intolerant, culture into an aggressive, expansionist one.”

He swivelled in place: “Come on, then! We must find this wormhole and close it!”

“Doctor, I must insist that these monster be destroyed!” called out Lady Allendale, following him with a determined frown on her pale face. "We cannot abide an invasion!"

The Doctor blatantly ignored this, but Rose noticed how tight his jaw was.

“I will not allow my people to come to harm!” she called after them in warning.

“Indeed we shall not!” echoed Greyson. "Worry not, my Lady..."

The timetravellers trooped after the Doctor, followed by the butler's voice assuring the Lady that they would see to it that the monsters would be destroyed.

The Doctor just sighed.

With the sonic screwdriver easily picking up the vibrations of the swaying web, the Time Lord had little trouble extrapolating the point of origin.

“Wish it had been this easy last time,” commented Ron with a bemused smile.

It took them a little less then twenty minutes to individuate the wormhole and when they did, the Doctor forgot all his annoyance at once. “Oooh! It's beautiful!”

Rose agreed wholeheartedly. “Amazing!” she breathed.

The spiderwebs grew tighter behind a thick shrubbery, finally plunging into an evanescent morning glory spillway of light, from which a contained light fall flowed upwards. At the top of it, there was a delicately arranged, glass-looking construction that looked like a turbine spinning outwards: it spun the light right back into the non-existent spillway, giving the impression of a carefully balanced perpetual motion toy.

Getting close, Rose felt as if a hook was gripping her navel, drawing her towards the wormhole, although resisting it wasn't problematic in the least.

“Yup. Just like last time,” sighed Harry, fishing out his wand.

“This is magnificent! Look at this, they're using their technology of meteorological control to harness the wormhole energy! I've never seen anything like this. It's brilliant!”

“It's also a problem, Doctor,” said Hermione dryly.

“Well, that too,” he admitted, whipping out his specs.

In no time at all, he was poking and prodding the contraption, babbling on about it and blithely ignoring Hermione's scolding.

His interest did not go unnoticed.

The reverberations of his pokes ran out along the silkways, making them glisten briefly with all the colours of the rainbow and vibrate to the point where Rose could almost, _almost_ hear their high-pitched vibes.

In a handful of seconds, five Naralians were converging on them from various directions, looking as panicked as spiders could.

They were, indeed, big and covered in dark blue hairs, with four pairs of eyes atop their rounded heads and odd, yellowish markings on their abdomen. Gleaming blue fangs framed their small mouths, leaving no doubt of their venomous nature.

If Rose hadn't known better, she'd have thought them flying alright. They glided through the air with the speed and grace of birds of prey, perfectly controlled in all their motions. As horrid as their looks were to her, she could not deny the utter beauty of their movements.

They were also screaming – sort of. The Tardis obligingly translated, to the surprise of the three magicals, but beneath the words they could still hear the screeches and clicks of their actual language, utterly alien but strangely harmonious. Just like them, it had a horrid beauty of its own.

Rose winced when she understood their bellows, however.

“Demons!” was the clearest cry – almost as venomous as the accusation of being French that had been thrown at them earlier. “Dwellers of Hell. Kill! There is no Lore here. There is no Web here. Kill – kill – kill – kill...”

Yeah... there'd be no talking with these ones.

“Doctor!” she yelled urgently, exchanging places with Hermione, who had her wand out and a grim look.

Behind her, Rose could hear Harry and Ron bellowing, their words lost in Fortuna's screeching: the dragonet was jumping up and down, loudly demanding that Harry 'make her properly big again', and sounded for all the world like a tantrum-throwing toddler with a deep, bronze-like voice.

"Yes, yes, give me a minute!" The Doctor was completely distracted by their technology, busy wrapping a thin, metallic string around some parts, sonicking others, pushing and prodding and generally twisting the contraption into something far less elegant and, Rose imagined, far more useful.

Luckily, their three companions had things well in hand.

By the time Rose's yelling and grabbing of his arm refocused him on the matter at hand, the aliens had been effectively subdued and trussed up in what looked at a glance like swathes of their own silk; the wizards had their wands out and trained on the lumpy cocoons.

“Riiight!” exclaimed the Doctor, briefly looking uncertain. Then he shrugged it off. “Right. Then. Amazing device you lot've got here, truly brilliant. Easy to reverse, too. You jump through it, you'll be back home in no time and then I'll just seal it up after you, how's that?” he said brightly.

Spitted clanking screeches accused him of being a demon and he sighed despondently.

“Oh, just throw them in already!" grumbled Ron, who was keeping his distance from their captives and looked rather disgusted with the whole situation.

A clamour called their attention to a small crowd of belligerent servants, led by a grim looking Greyson. They were haphazardly armed and obviously worked up, though finding the 'monsters' already defeated deflated them somewhat. The anger turned to glee, however, and an uncomely desire to set the Naralians on fire, which wasn't much better. The alien spiders' ferocious screeches didn't help matters any.

In the end, the Doctor had to coax and cajole both Humans and Naralians, come up on the fly with a way to recover the already spun web to placate the righteous blue aliens, convince the righteous locals that expulsion was preferable to execution and reiterate again and again that yes, his idea would work, yes, it would ensure the monsters be gone and yes, the device he and Hermione cobbled together with a lot of jiggery-pokery and a dash of magic would, indeed, replicate his sealing effect on any other wormhole they might happen to find.

The whole thing involved quite a lot of yelling.The suspicion and resentment around the evidently fed-up Time Lord was still high (the butler, in particular, did not stop glaring at him for a minute the whole time) but when everything was sorted at last, spiders off to fly on their silkways, humans off to, no doubt, gather a wide-eyed crowd at the pub first chance they got, the Doctor found himself smiling. At least, nobody had died.

"Good enough," agreed Rose with a bright, wide smile. "Now the question is: does this world have chips?"

They didn't, as it turned out: but Lady Allendale did know how to arrange a celebratory dinner – she was a very good hostess, and laid an excellent table.

The Tardis happily provided her with a lovely, time-appropriate gown in shades of shell pink and pearl grey, which had the Doctor gulp and stare (always flattering); Hermione, too, was gorgeous in pale green silk and a complicated hairdo that made her look taller and as graceful as a swan: steadfastly by her side, Ron looked smug and smitten in equal parts. Harry looked uncomfortable but resigned in his formal uniform and Fortuna, still tiny, looked absolutely gorgeous perched precariously between his shoulders and the back of his chair.

Sipping a glass of wine, Rose took a moment to look around the ornate table and revel in the utterly fantastic absurdness of her life with the Doctor.

A the foot of the table, Lady Allendale was doing her best to humour the Doctor's disconcerting enthusiasm.

“...and if the rumours are true, they even have a private swimming pool!” he was saying happily, about what, Rose had no idea.

“A swimming... do you mean the reservoir tank, beneath the hall?” asked Lady Allendale uncertainly.

“Precisely! Didn't an admiral take a daily bath there?”

Lady Allendale coloured. “I believe you are referring to the Willoughby family – I could not say what is true or not,” she said embarrassed.

“Ah, the Willoughbys! Great explorers – Sir Hugh Willoughby died in the Arctic in 1554 attempting a North East passage to China.”

“I have never heard of such a thing.”

“Really? Oh, well, maybe it's a difference of this universe then.”

“Your words make little sense,” Lady Allendale said uncertainly.

Rose bit her lip to stifle a laugh.

On the opposite end, her son, Mr. George Laurence, had drawn Hermione in a polite conversation, utterly surprised to find her politically inclined.

"How could I not be?" the witch said earnestly. "Wilberforce's fight is beyond admirable!"

“I can hardly say otherwise, can I?” he smiled. “What with my father being one of his staunchest supporters! But I understand your meaning; indeed, I am proud of the Earl's belief on this most important matter.”

Harry for his part was regaling the young and pretty Mrs. Laurence with tales of the covert, Fortuna chiming in now and then, while Ron paid homage to the excellent meal.

And all around them, a sitting room straight out of a Jane Austen's novel, but with a dragon in it.

Oh, how she loved this!

Later, they piled into the Tardis after yet another misunderstanding - over port of all things - convinced them that a dignified escape was their best option.

“I don't remember being thought so thoroughly suspicious and traitorous so often in so short a time, like, ever,” grumbled the Doctor. He sniffed in mock-outrage: “And I've certainly never accused to be a French so many times before!"

“This really isn't the place for us, is it?” commented Rose, ruefully, but with a huge smile.

“Oh, God, all I want is to go home,” moaned Hermione, letting herself drop on the pilot’s chair. “Well, maybe a hot shower and then going home,” she amended. “I have really missed hot showers. You don’t really realize how precious they are until you have to struggle with buckets of reheated water..."

"What are you talking about? There were perfectly nice hot baths at the Covert!" protested Harry.

"For you, maybe," she retorted. "Only aviators were allowed there!"

Ron sank down next to his girlfriend, eyes a little dreamy: “I wonder if butterbeer tastes as good as I remember? And oooh... my mum’s roasted pork... what I wouldn’t give...”

“What's butterbeer?” The Doctor's eyes were lit up with interest and curiosity.

“No. No!” Hermione laboriously got herself to her feet and ready to argue. “I recognize that look. We're _not_ having another bloody adventure, do you hear me? Just take us home, for the love of...!”

"Oh, but...!"

"That is, if you even can!" she snorted.

“Of course I can! I'm a genius!"

Rose perked up: “Really? You’ve figured out how to get back to our respective universes?" She couldn’t conceal her hope: not that she minded travelling to other universes, so long as the Doctor was with her, but the idea of never seeing her Mum again...

"You know what happened to get us here, then?” asked Harry curiously from where he was petting a tired-looking Fortuna, both sitting on the floor.

“We-elll...” the Doctor dithered. “Not quite, no. But! It doesn’t matter, well, not much, because I’ve found a way to retrace our steps, which means that it doesn’t matter how many universes we cross into, so long as we don’t mind passing through all of them in reverse order before we get back to our starting point. It’s all to do with...”

“Yeah, ok,” cut him off Rose, who was just too tired to bear a long-winded explanation right then. "That's great!"

"Fine! Good! Then take us home!"

"Just, just, just, just, just hold on. Hold on just a tick," said the Doctor quickly. "Just a tiny little, just a little tick. If you think about it, we should really take advantage of this unique set of circumstances and--"

"No!" shouted Hermione.

In spite of her obstinacy, however, it did not take the Time Lord long to cajole her into another side-trip... just round the corner, well, really a couple of galaxies further than that, to see the Naralians' winddances, and then a couple planets over, to watch the triple dawn over the salty planes of Rrash, as promised; and then - because of Fortuna's curiosity - he took them to see the fields of heavenly mirrors, the flowers that only grew on Sagar IV, which absorbed sunlight all day long and then, during the night, released it in a soft glow that mirrored the stars in the sky.

And then the Centaurs, which the Doctor hadn’t forgotten - rather interesting fellows, what with their obsession with observing the stars; the Doctor had a very nice conversation about the Sybil with them (now _there_ was a woman who could dance the tarantella!) and then about the renown soothsayers of Frenula, a desert planet on the other side of the constellation of Cassiopeia; which naturally ended in Hermione bullying him in taking them there to meet them...

Needless to say, it was quite a while before the three friends - and one dragon - returned to their usual lives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got completely away from me. I had a different idea entirely, but every character seemed quite determined to do as they pleased – even the aliens! Quite inconsiderate of them, really! In any case, now I'm considering writing a one-shot of the Trio during the ten months gap - if there's anything in particular you would like to see explored, please leave me a note!
> 
> About those Bertrand and Henry blokes... Many historians consider the Hundred Years War, which pitted the kings and kingdoms of France and England against each other from 1337 to 1453 and hinged, among other things, on the claiming of the crown of France by the Kings of England, the defining moment of the development of strong national identities in both countries and possibly the start of their centuries-old rivalry. Bertrand du Guesclin was the commander that succeeded in reconquering almost all the territory France had ceded after the unexpected significant victories of English longbows; Henry V of England is the king who renewed the war after a hiatus.


	9. But I tell you what it will be:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor waited for a handful of seconds (eight and a half) before prompting: “Doesn't it bother you that it's... bigger on the inside?”  
> “Every fine ship is,” replied Captain Jack Sparrow matter-of-factly. “And this looks to me to be a very fine ship indeed.”  
> The Tardis' lights brightened in appreciation.

The Doctor flew into the Tardis, blowing the door open with all the haste that the huge, tentacled creature hot on their heels recommended; he dropped the arm of the bloke he'd saved _in extremis_ from a squishy end (and dragged all the way up the beach and into his ship with barely a glance) and moved quickly to launch the dematerialization sequence.

“Right!” he cried exuberantly. “We'll be safe here, no worries, just give me a moment...”

A thundering hit shook the Tardis' external dimension when the creature threw itself against it with all its mole. A tentacle as big as his leg and oddly hairy thrust itself inside with a whipping motion, forcing the Doctor to bat it away to reach the lever he needed. He grimaced. What was a bommarian squid even _doing_ on Earth?

A shot rang from behind him, followed with a high-pitched keen and furious rustle and he caught a glimpse of the triangular silhouette of his... guest, tricorne hat over long coat over salt-encrusted boots, and a puff of smoke rising from the pistol in front of him.

Clearly, the man had taken the kind of approach the Doctor despised to the problem, but there was nothing to do about it, and it _had_ bought them some time.

Grimacing again, he pushed the last lever and started inputting coordinates at a fast place. “Close the door, will you? The entire hordes of Genghis Kahn couldn't break my ship's door down – and believe me, they tried,” he said quickly, while the familiar, comforting sound of the Tardis' dematerialization lifted all around him, keeping pace with the rotor's movement. “I'm the Doctor, by the way. Who're you?” he threw out carelessly, busy dancing around the console to check that all was working correctly.

“Me? I'm Captain Jack Sparrow!” came the cocky answer. “At your service.”

The Doctor glanced up from the controls in time to catch a sweeping bow from his guest, complete with his hat drawing an elaborate path through the air before returning firmly to the top of his head.

Now that he could give him more than a cursory glance, the Doctor could see that his newest acquaintance was decidedly... peculiar.

His long, dark coat definitely encountered the Doctor's approval (although not as stylish as his own, it was a very fine coat), as did the hard-wearing black trousers stuffed into long, sturdy black boots.

His hat couldn't entirely hide the red bandanna wrapped around his head, and the eye easily spied the equally red knotted sash tied around his waist, in which he was tucking his pistol; but the Doctor ignored that in favour of a sudden fascination with the all sorts of beads and trinkets that adorned his long dreadlocks, unevenly greyed by the sun (which the Doctor absently catalogued – small bones and pieces of ribbon, Kuchi beads and threaded copper wire, a black pearl and a Chinese luck coin, a reindeer shinbone – how odd – and was that a gold tooth? Interesting.)

Why, the man was obviously a pirate! The Doctor found himself grinning in delighted enthusiasm. Oh, this was promising indeed!

And he had been standing on the beach, a wreck of a boat sadly aground a little to the side, brushing seaweed from his shoulders fastidiously (how had he ended up there?) and obviously more concerned with adjusting his hat just so than with escaping the monstrous creature the Doctor had (completely by accident!) disturbed. (Really, what _was_ a brommarian squid doing in the Caribbean?)

Though once the Doctor had started yelling at him to leg it and grabbed his arm to propel him in the Tardis' direction, he'd proved to be quite a good runner – if an unconventional one. A small part of the Doctor's mind briefly wondered if his odd way of running, as if he was balancing on a rope ten meters over the ground, had any advantages in terms of speed, or perhaps energy consumption.

In any case, the acquaintance certainly promised to be interesting.

“Welcome aboa...” he started and then what he was seeing caught up with him.

The Tardis was flying with her usual flair, shaking and bucking beneath his feet – yet his guest didn't seem bothered in the least.

When she shifted abruptly to the side with a sickening lurch, the Doctor absently compensated, all too used to this kind of turbulence to be discomposed; he was quite amazed however at noticing that the pirate had even less trouble than him maintaining his balance.

It was quite unheard of.

“Are you alright? Sorry, I'm afraid it's a bit of a bumpy ride...” he tried probingly. “But in any case, welcome to the Tardis.”

The pirate looked completely unfazed. He stood at ease in the middle of the incredible console room, unruffled by the way it was tossing and turning about in the Time Vortex. He wasn't even straining out his hands to catch himself on the corals or the railings.

It was like Captain Sparrow was perfectly in tune with the Tardis, and swaying in perfect counterpoint. The effect was incredibly strange.

He gave the Doctor a long look. “Bumpy ride? ...Clearly you've never been caught up in a typhoon,” he commented, blasé.

The Doctor didn't know whether to gape or grin.

Stroking his goatee, the pirate returned the Doctor's scrutiny with kohl-lined, intelligent eyes.

“When you say doctor...” inquired Captain Sparrow, with all indications of genuine interest. “Do you mean to declare yourself a gentleman concerned with knowledge, desiring to learn as much as he could about the human body, and inclined to press all manner of physics and drugs on poor, unsuspecting sufferers, by way of cloaking their usefulness, or lack thereof, in Latin?” He moved forward with an affable smile and the rotor's light caught on a couple of gold teeth. “Or do you perhaps mean to pronounce yourself capable of amputating a limb with skill, and bloodlet, lance boils and pull teeth with the best of them?”

The Doctor didn't answer right away, too fascinated with the odd human and his even odder reactions. “Oh, a bit of both,” he finally replied, quite cheerfully. “And quite possibly a lot more.”

The pirate shot him an arch look, but quickly returned to looking about him with undisguised curiosity, all the while absently tormenting either the hilt of his sword, or one of the many trinkets hanging from his dreadlocks.

“Interesting,” he commented blandly, the glint in his eyes belying his neutrality.

The Doctor waited for a handful of seconds (eight and a half) before prompting: “Doesn't it bother you that it's... bigger on the inside?”

“Every fine ship is,” replied Captain Sparrow matter-of-factly. “And this looks to me to be a very fine ship indeed.”

The Tardis' lights brightened in appreciation.

“Oh, she's magnificent, she is,” agreed the Doctor in a heartfelt tone. Then he shook his head and chuckled. “Well, as I was saying... welcome aboard, Captain Sparrow!”

“Thank ye kindly... Doctor.”

The pirate gave him a long, inscrutable look.

“...What?” asked the Doctor defensively.

“I happen to be wonderin'.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. And what I be wonderin' is, firstly, what might a fine an' learned man such as yourself be doin' in these mysterious waters, and secondly, where might these waters be, as it were? For I c'n tell we're no longer in the Caribbean.”

“Ah!” said the Doctor, a finger raised to highlight the appropriateness of the question. “Now, that is quite the story, Captain Sparrow, quite the story indeed – but I suppose you could say that I am... investigating.”

“Investigating?”

“Precisely.”

“And what be ye investigatin', Doctor?”

The Doctor grinned: “Glowing soldiers.”

Sparrow's eyebrows went up almost to the brim of his hat and he leaned back, regarding the Doctor with a cocked head. “Interestin',” he proclaimed after a moment.

The Doctor's grin widened: “Would you care to join me in this investigation, Captain Sparrow?”

The pirate swayed for a long instant, head lowered in thought, contemplating the matter. “And what would one gain of such an endeavour, if one were inclined to... investigate?”

“Why, the chance to see first-hand lands and seas – and skies – no man has seen before! You strike me as an explorer, Captain Sparrow, a man who loves adventure. I can give you adventures beyond even your imagining. What say you?”

“I'm quite able to explore happily on me own, mate. Been doin' it longer than ya think.”

“Ah, but not in the kind of waters we're in right now! Wellllll... I say waters, but there's really no water at all involved – no water in outer space, you see – unless it's nearby a quasar, but... err...” Suddenly, the Doctor grinned widely: “Have a look for yourself,” he invited, gesturing towards the Tardis doors.

The pirate gave him an unimpressed look, but swayed down the ramp and threw the door open theatrically.

A very long silence followed.

The Tardis was spinning slowly at the edge of a giant cluster of stars, a dense smattering of tiny blips shining in soul searing splendour, filling the frame of the doors like grains of the oddest sands poured onto a ship's deck, their light combining to create a haze of reddish haloes against the frighteningly cold, indifferent blackness surrounding them.

Captain Sparrow raised a hand and not-quite-pointed: “Tha'...” He looked as if he didn't quite know how to finish the sentence. “That's.” He tried again and cleared his throat, wrinkling his nose and squinting his eyes as if it might help him make sense of things. “We're sailing in the night sky,” he finally stated with circumspection. This was certainly _different_.

“All of time and space – I can go anywhere, anywhen, see the most incredible sights the universe at large has to offer...” said the Doctor with satisfaction.

Sparrow's eyes widened as his mouth closed and he raised one index finger to tap thoughtfully on his chin, leaning back precariously as if to distance himself from his own life.

There was no sense of direction, no landmarks or identifiable reference points, not even depth perception. It was beautiful, and strange, and intriguing, and yet...

“I prefer the sea,” he commented honestly.

“You prefer the sea,” dead-panned the Doctor. “My frankly magnificent ship, which by the way is the pinnacle of time and dimension travelling technology, brings you to a star cluster at the centre of your galaxy – a sight your species won't get to see for centuries yet, I might add - and all you can say is that you prefer the sea!”

There was a rather lengthy silence as they stared at each other.

“Of course, this is rather nice, this... thing, here.” Jack Sparrow gestured grandly. “Nice.”

“But?” The Doctor regarded him testily.

Sparrow wavered, but only for an instant: “No horizon here.”

“Ah!”

The Doctor thought this over.

“Horizon it is, then!”

With his usual energy, he closed the doors and darted to the controls and twisted and pushed and punched until the trumpeting sounds of dematerialization rose all around them.

When the time rotor wheezed to a halt and the tremors stopped, he gestured to the doors again, giddy with his expected triumph. “Go on then.”

Obligingly, the pirate threw the door open again.

A sea of purplish fields criss-crossed by narrow waterways, red waves gently lapping at their rounded banks, expanded under their eyes, unmarred by hills or rocks or even buildings. A line of darkish blue marked the apparent intersection of earth and sky – a sky so pale as to appear almost white.

A persistent breeze flew over the fields, a slightly sulphury smell to it; only a distant flock of bluish birds broke the stillness of the horizon.

The Doctor offered a cheerful commentary about alkaline soils and distances from orbiting moons and protein levels in reeds, but it was clear that Captain Sparrow wasn't listening to a word.

He stood still in the breeze, a hint of a smile on his face, evidently enjoying the wonderful scenery.

Casually, he shot a hand out to silence the Doctor, who dodged it with a jerk and a squeaky: “What?”

“Beauty itself doth of itself persuade the eyes of men without orator,” quoted Sparrow.

“Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece,” recognized the Doctor automatically. “Oh, that's surprising.”

Sparrow's eyes narrowed: “How so?”

By contrast, the Doctor's widened comically: “No, no, no, no, I didn't mean it like that!”

The Captain snorted, but let it go.

After a long while, the pirate turned to the Time Lord.

“Alright, mate. You've got me attention and no mistake. Be right interestin' ta sail with you – an' yer mighty ship – fer a while, I can tell. Now about this investigation of yours. How came you to hear of these luminous soldiers aglowin' in tha night?”

“Ah!” nodded the Doctor. “That's a bit of a tale.”

Sparrow handed him a flask with the air of a munificent lord.

The Doctor blinked. Where had it even come from?

“Tellin' tales makes throats parched,” commented the pirate sagely. “I reckon ye'll be wantin' the rum, while you talk.”

The Doctor chuckled, but waved the offer down.

Sparrow looked at him strangely, then shrugged and drank himself. No point in wasting good rum on weird folk, was there?

The Doctor found himself a spot in the purple grass and plopped down cross-legged, the pirate by his side, letting the breeze play with his hair; he launched into his tale quite happily.

“It all began with me taking a wrong turn – you know how it is, forget to spin a dial and you find yourself twenty decades and two galaxies over.” He made a face, but only for a moment.

“So there I am, quite unexpectedly, at Pittsburg Landing, near Shiloh, Tennessee, in the spring of 1862, of all things. Not exactly the Kharazian market I'd been aiming for, but I figured it could be interesting to have a look around – Major General Ulysses S. Grant was camped there, you see, waiting for Major General Don Carlos Buell’s army to meet up with him,” recounted the Doctor. “There's bound to be someone interesting among that many soldiers, I told myself. Besides, I never spent much time during the American Civil War, I decided I might as well try and rectify that.”

Despite obviously having no idea of the gentlemen, or even the places, involved, Captain Sparrow listened attentively. A good tale was a good tale – and a good excuse to have some rum, to boot.

“Now this was the end of March, you understand,” went on the Doctor, “and I knew that the Confederate troops from Mississippi would launch a surprise attack on the morning of April 6th, hoping to defeat Grant's troops before the second army arrived. As you might guess, I wanted to be out of the way before that – there was nothing I could do about it, and it was going to be a massacre, you see, Grant's men would manage to hold their position until the reinforcements arrived and they would end up outnumbering the Confederates by more than 10,000.”

“Not good odds,” nodded Sparrow. “I wouldn't have stuck around either.”

“Hmm. But I'd made a couple of friends among the soldiers and I thought maybe I could stop by a few days later, check on them after the Union troops had forced the Confederates back into Corinth – their base, that is – and I could maybe help the medics out a bit. None of them was prepared to cope with the disastrous body count, over 3,000 dead and more than 16,000 wounded – they could certainly use some help.”

“That's very noble of you,” said Sparrow in a tone so totally innocent and admiring as to sound quite the opposite.

The Doctor glowered at him.

“Anyway,” he said sharply. “I have seen my share of battlefields, and of the aftermaths, too. Bullet and bayonet wounds aren't that horrible, on their own, but with the lack of medical understanding of the times, why, the wounds weren't even cleaned, shrapnel and dirt and whatnot left to rot there, germ theory of disease and antibiotics were still a few years away, sadly, and with the abundance of rain and mud, infection was a given – besides, after months marching and eating field rations on the battlefront, many soldiers’ immune systems were weakened and couldn’t fight off infection on their own.”

“I have no idea what you're blabbing about, but I bow to your expertise in matters of wounds and illnesses, Doctor.”

“How generous of you,” commented the Doctor sarcastically.

Sparrow smiled secretively. “Any pirate worth their salt has a healthy respect for a surgeon, Doctor. A man what holds your life in his hands must not be underrated. I would wager soldiers think the same.”

“They generally do,” acknowledged the Doctor.

“So you were helpin' the poor sods out,” suggested Sparrow, gesturing to invite the continuation of the tale.

"Now here comes the interesting part," said the Doctor, leaning closer to the pirate and lowering his voice. "The Tardis landed among a group of soldiers sitting in the mud - they'd been waiting for two rainy days and nights for the medics to get around to them. I was happy to find that my new friend Robert had survived, along with his closest comrades. I was less happy to find them in those conditions. I wanted to get them out of the rain and mud at once, but their excitement about 'angels' distracted me."

“Angels,” stated Sparrow flatly.

“That's what they said,” agreed the Doctor smugly, leaning back to enjoy the effect of his declaration.

Sparrow cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “And you believe 'em?”

“Would you have?” goaded the Doctor with a smile.

Sparrow seemed to ponder the question. Then he gave a little, gleaming smile: “I been travellin' tha seas me all life, Doctor, an' I've seen many a curious thing – cursed treasures and cursed men, wild storms and peaceful sands, the expected and the unexpected – but ministering winged messenger of heaven, as glorious as the night? That's a bit much even for me.”

“What is it with you and quoting Shakespeare?” sniffed the Doctor.

“Nothin' wrong with Shakespeare,” retorted the pirate.

“True,” conceded the Time Lord after a pause.

Sparrow took a swig from his flask. “You're a man of science, Doctor, a man of knowledge,” he continued in a kind tone. “Do you really believe in creatures descending from heaven to save the unworthy and all that rot?”

“Oh, of course not.” The Doctor waved the question away. “But see, Robert and his friends _had_ seen their wounds glowing, casting a faint light into the darkness of the battlefield – all of them, starting at dusk the first night. Could have been a collective hallucination, of course, but...” He pursed his lips eloquently.

Then he gave the pirate a triumphal look: “But the best thing is, those whose wounds glowed had a better survival rate and had their wounds heal more quickly and cleanly than their unilluminated brothers-in-arms. That's what made them think of angels, see. The seemingly protective effect of the mysterious light. They started to call it 'Angel’s Glow', because what else could cure a man with nothing but light? Well, there's nanogenes for instance, but they wouldn't know of that...”

“Did you see the glowing wounds for yerself?”

“Of course. I stuck around for two nights and it was as they'd claimed – glowing wounds, healing better than could be expected.”

“That's strange.”

“You can say it.”

“But I've seen stranger.”

“Me too – doesn't mean it's not interesting.”

Sparrow took a fortifying gulp of rum. “So now you're investigatin'...?”

“Oh, I know what's causing it,” assured the Doctor. “In a few centuries, they will be known as _Photorhabdus luminescens._ Luminescent bacteria. From what I gathered, they live in the guts of parasitic worms called nematodes, and the two share a lifecycle. Division of labour, if you like. See, nematodes hunt down insect larvae in the soil or on plant surfaces, burrow into their bodies, and take up residence in their blood vessels. There, they puke up the _P. luminescens_ bacteria living inside them.”

The Captain looked thoroughly disgusted.

Oblivious, the Doctor went on: “When they're released, they start glowing a soft blue and producing a number of chemicals that kill the insect host and suppress and kill all the other microorganisms already inside it, so that they and their nematode partner can feed, grow and multiply without interruptions. But that's not all! When the insect corpse is more or less hollowed out, the nematode eats the bacteria!”

“Double crossing buggers,” commented the pirate.

“Not really. The bacteria don't get digested, they just re-colonize the nematode’s guts so they can hitch a ride as it bursts forth from the corpse in search of a new host. On to greener pastures!”

Captain Sparrow's disgust didn't abate.

“Now, what makes those little blighters very, very clever (and kind of strange) is the glowing. Because you see: right before they get back in their nematode taxi, the _P. luminescens_ are at critical mass in the insect corpse and therefore at their brightest. That many glowing bacteria attract other insects to the body and make the nematode’s transition to a new host much easier. It's like sending out an invitation to a party!”

Despite the Doctor's enthusiasm, the pirate remained less than impressed. “If your tale is true, then why weren't the good soldiers eaten from the inside out, then?”

“Now, that: that's a pretty cool set of coincidences. _P. luminescens_ can't live at human body temperature! That means that the soldiers' wounds are an inhospitable environment. But! Tennesse in the spring is cool – nighttime temperatures were low enough, especially out in the rain for two days straight, for the soldiers to get hypothermia.”

Captain Sparrow winced, familiar with the ailment.

“The lowered body temperature made for a good living environment for the bacteria. So the _P. luminescens_ , along with the nematodes, got into the soldiers’ wounds from the soil – turning their wounds into a nice light show, and incidentally saving their lives. Whatever pathogens might have infected the soldiers’ wounds were killed off by the chemical cocktail that _P. luminescens_ uses to clear out its competition... But of course, when the temperature rose again, they couldn't survive and were cleaned out by the soldiers' immune system without great trouble. Amazing, isn't it?”

Another long silence followed, this one contemplative. And sprinkled with rum.

When the rum was gone, Captain Sparrow grimaced, shook his flask with little hope, then sighed deeply. “Minuscule monsters,” he clarified.

“That's right,” beamed the Doctor.

“Eating away the infection.”

“Cool, huh?”

The pirate shrugged. “There's more things on Earth than men can guess.”

“Ah! Ye-es... Earth. Well, now that's the problem, isn't it? _Are_ they from Earth?”

Sparrow's eyebrows climbed his forehead: “You think the minuscule monsters come from heaven?”

The Doctor grimaced. “Not what I have in mind, no.”

“Ah!” the pirate nodded in sudden understanding. “I suppose you're not the only one with the skill to navigate the sky, then. Coulda been pests on them ships what sail those mysterious, starlit waters you showed me earlier, is that what ye're thinkin'?” He did not give the Doctor the time to comment. “Why do they bother you, though? Seem to me they're a good thing. Useful, as it were.”

“I don't want to stop them, necessarily, I just want to know where they're from and why they're here. Well, _there._ Call it intellectual curiosity. Except it's actually a bit more than that...”

In a burst of movement, the Time Lord jumped back towards the Tardis, gesturing for a not particularly interested Captain to follow him. The pirate joined him by the monitors lazily, giving the blinking screens a cursory glance from under the brim of his hat.

“At first I was only tracking them backwards in time, more or less in 50 years intervals,” explained the Doctor. “Just because. But then I started noticing... stuff. Stuff that makes me think there might be something not quite right here. That is... there.” The Doctor waved impatiently. “It's not just Tennesse, either. I've been to Alabama – pity they hadn't imported bananas yet, I'd have loved a banana pudding, they're excellent, truly--”

Dismissing the odd moving pictures, Sparrow wandered around the console room, contemplating it curiously.

“...and then to Florida – got a bit distracted there, had to reverse an implanted gravity field around a slope, wouldn't do for cars to start rolling uphills, would it?...” went on the Doctor, oblivious.

The pirate let him talk and ran an intent hand along the beautiful surface of a wall, mind engrossed, and smiled triumphantly when the outline of a cabinet appeared.

“...wetlands of Southern Louisiana and that's when things got a little complicated, because I happened upon a pack of Drashigs.”

The Doctor grimaced exaggeratedly and Captain Sparrow, attention momentarily caught, cocked his head: “Never heard of them.”

“Huge swamp-dwelling carnivores,” said the Time Lord succinctly, “which, I might add, have no business being on Earth, seeing as they're originally from a Satellite of Grundle.”

With a raised eyebrow, the pirate returned his focus to the jumble of odd-looking knick-knacks the Tardis had gathered for his perusal, curious fingers dancing over odds and ends while the Doctor prattled on: “I could barely believe my eyes, but they were definitely Drashigs. Same social structure, same chilling screams, same propensity to eat anything, including metals. Not to worry, though, I took them home, so to speak, and that was a chore and a half in and of itself. But. Duty calls and all that. Still! Not the kind of creatures you want to meet unexpectedly, let me tell you.”

“I'm sure it's all very interesting,” said Sparrow in a tone that conveyed the opposite exceptionally well.

Leaving the screens, the Doctor stuck his hands in his pockets and wandered up to his guest.

“They're like massive, hairy snakes, with fanged mouths and six eyes on stalks,” he insisted, drawing up to the pirate, who was now holding a Coxihyxian goblet (the elongated form and hooked rim to accommodate its creators' beaks as recognizable to the Time Lord as the enamelled depictions of the Roots God on it) up for inspection, “strong enough to burst through metal structures and with thick enough hides to withstand machine gun fire. Of course, the locals had all sorts of tales about them already – Swamp Monsters will be a part of human folklore for centuries and – and – and just _what_ are you doing?” he said, realizing what he was seeing at last.

Sparrow just smiled.

“Stop that!” protested the Doctor. He snatched at the goblet half-heartedly and then gaped at the curio cabinet that had most certainly not been in the console room earlier. “Where did you even find... all... this...?” he demanded, totally bewildered.

Undaunted, the pirate juggled a few Mipmibian ornaments (which looked like oddly striped, miniature, ceramic pumpkins) and gave the bewildered Time Lord a genial smile: “I'll be honest, Doctor. I see no reason why a man of me skill should want ta take part in this investigation that ye be investigatin'.”

“What?” asked the Doctor, distracted by a set of janis thorns – weren't those Leela's? “Why not?”

“Land and sea are full of creatures beyond a man's wildest imagining, Doctor. Any man what has sailed knows this with no need for investigatin'. I hardly think it's cause for concern. Savvy?”

He dropped his hat unceremoniously onto one of the shelves, atop a gimcrack souvenir in the shape of a plinth with 'I Love Roma' on it, and picked up a feathered tiara the Doctor hadn't seen in centuries. “I saw a glowing parrot just the other day,” he said, trying the gaudy combination of feathers on for size. “It was eatin' a muskrat.”

“I'd stick with hats if I were you,” said the Doctor absently, then frowned: “Wait. What? A carnivorous parrot?”

“Funny ol' world, i'n'it?”

“A _bioluminescent_ carnivorous parrot? But that's brilliant! Where did you see it? I was trying to figure out where the origin point of these mutations is – that's how I got to that island...”

“Where ye found yours truly and the hairy tentacled beasty,” said the pirate, displaying himself in the feathered headpiece with arms spread wide and a cocky smile.

The Doctor ignored him, making his face fall, and sighed: “A bommarian squid. _No_ idea what it could possibly be doing on Earth. Much like those long-tailed turtles I found on Cayo Hueso, that are really originally from Mrinsk – the moon, not the asteroid. Wellll... I think they are. Even if long-tailed turtles from Mrinsk aren't supposed to have glowing shells, and those did.” He scowled at his own thoughts.

Sparrow perked up: “I like turtles,” he said happily, gaze faraway into memories of some kind.

The Doctor stared at him in astonishment: “Why? They're boring. Even when they glow.”

“Turtles what glow,” repeated Sparrow thoughtfully, divesting himself of the feathered tiara and retrieving his hat. “An' a glowin' parrot.” With a sudden burst of movement he stepped away and, throwing his arms around theatrically, asked: “Would tha' be tha same glow what the minuscule illness-eating monsters be glowin' with?”

“Precisely!” said the Doctor, closing the curio cabinet with finality and frowning at the Tardis for it. “I see you get the picture.”

The pirate stopped in mid-motion, a leg raised for an exaggerated step: “Not really.”

“But who would be interested in making species glow?” mused the Doctor aloud, twirling a 22nd century yo-yo he'd absently picked up with great expertise. His motions coaxed a merry little tune from it. Sparrow eyed it speculatively.

“I take you don't think these glowin' beasties of yours are the work of Mother Nature,” he said conversationally.

“Of course not! And yet. If it was some _one_ , I should be able to detect them with my scanners. All I can get are faint energy readings about five centuries too soon...”

Sparrow's eyes stayed riveted on the yo-yo, head following the complex movements the Doctor was putting it through. He was humming the merry tune to himself, with a small, delighted smile.

“Are you even listening to me?” demanded the Doctor, baffled.

“I am devoted and dedicated to the listenin' of your every word, Doctor. Words, I feel compelled to point out, what aren't givin' me any reason ta investigate.”

“It's totally worth investigating!” countered the Time Lord with a frown. He stopped spinning the yo-yo and the pirate pouted. With a sigh, the Doctor disappeared the yo-yo in one of his cavernous pockets and insisted: “Someone's responsible for making perfectly innocent animals glowing!”

Captain Sparrow shrugged. “Someone's always responsible fer somethin',” he muttered. Then he raised his voice, proclaiming in a conciliatory way: “My great and hard-won experience in matters of investigation tells me that this is the kind of investigation when investigatin' is not tha best choice for the one who's investigatin'.”

“Have much experience in the art of investigation, then, do you?” asked the Doctor snidely.

“One might say I have, mate, one might say so indeed. Been doin' some serious investigatin' of me own a time or two, you know.” He leaned very close to the Doctor, giving him a long, meaningful look: “On matters of _treasure;_ savvy?”

The Doctor blinked, realizing with some amazement that the pirate's distinctive odour had triggered his respiratory bypass without his conscious input.

He put some space between himself and his newest companion, making a mental note to find him a room with a luxurious bath if he stuck around, but beamed nonetheless: “Excellent!” he exclaimed cheerfully. “Then let us put our combined experience in matters of investigation to good use and find these glowing-loving meddlers!”

He moved purposefully around the control, setting coordinates and such.

“Yes to the first, yes to the second,” agreed Sparrow quickly, pushing himself into the Doctor's path and stopping short of actually making contact, but running twitchy hands up and down his frame without actually touching him. “But only insomuch as we remember that if there be monsters in the waters and no proper recompense to gain in facing said monsters, then a smart man wouldn't stick around and certainly wouldn't go lookin' for the already mentioned monsters.”

He gave the Doctor a measured look and added, with feeling: “A smart man, and I fancy myself smart enough, Doctor, a smart man _runs_.”

“Can't argue with that. I love to run. Been doing it for centuries.”

“Good!” beamed the pirate brightly, giving the impression of a toddler about to clap his hands in glee.

“But!...” continued the Doctor and Sparrow's smile vanished as he narrowed his eyes in annoyance. “If we don't go looking for the monsters – animals! I mean the animals! They aren't necessarily monsters after all, really the definition of monster varies from culture to culture, but anyway, if we don't go looking for them how will we figure out what's causing their presence here and now?”

“Why should we figure it out?”

“Why should we not?”

The two stared at each other, both completely puzzled by their odd companion.

The pirate tried again: “What purpose would be served in investigatin', an action what can only bring you to findin' whatever foul beasties you expect to find in your investigations, when the result of yer investigatin' would only be to run away from them foul beasties and not continue to investigate what you're investigatin'?”

“That's not the only possible result of this investigation at all!” protested the Doctor. “And I'm really growing tired of the word 'investigation'. It's a very annoying word. In fact, I shall heretofore forbid its use on my Tardis. Do _not_ say 'investigation' again.”

Captain Sparrow stared at the whining Doctor in vaguely scornful bafflement.

He stared some more.

The Doctor mulishly refused to be cowed.

“Fine,” the pirate conceded graciously.

The Time Lord sniffed, feeling sheepish about feeling pleased with himself for it.

“Still don't see why I should risk meself fer a curse of some sort, what makes things glow. It's harmless,” went on Captain Sparrow. “ _And_ useless. It seems to me tha' this would be a futile, unprofitable endeavour. Savvy?”

“Where's your sense of adventure!?” the Doctor muttered sulkily.

“I save it for _profitable_ endeavours.”

With a dramatic swish, the pirate turned his back on the Time Lord, dismissing the discussion. He marched off to the side, where the Tardis' coral supports branched harmoniously towards the vaulted ceiling of the control room, creating a nice precarious perch on a smooth beam.

Sparrow jumped up on it, stretching his legs out and crossing them lazily, arms above his head for a long moment before they came to rest on his chest with the nonchalance of an idle cat, coat tails dangling from the beam he was balancing on.

He tilted his hat just so, letting only a gleam of his gold-toothed smile appear under it.

“Fine,” sulked the Time Lord. “Be that way.”

He materialized the Tardis and stalked to the doors, ignoring the pirate.

Sparrow didn't move, for all appearances determined to enjoy a lazy nap while the Doctor went about his business.

He was almost immediately startled into a fall quite abruptly, his curse lost in the forceful roar of the elements outside, because the Doctor threw open the doors on sudden thunderous rain and howling wind, chillingly wet air, and stark, blinding lightnings followed at once by booming, rumbling roars.

The Time Lord had automatically taken a step outside and the briefest moment it took him to shook himself out of the shock was enough to drench him to his bones. Bucket loads of rain were pouring down, thick and dense and unrelenting, thrown in every direction by the furious winds.

“Blimey!” he grumbled, examining his soaked coat with a pout. It looked worse for wear even after a handful of seconds – some of that rain must have been saltwater. That was not good – what if it ruined the coat? He loved that coat. Janis Joplin had given him that coat.

Appearing suddenly by his side and making his nose twitch, Sparrow contemplated the storm raging just outside. He put a hand out, which was instantly drenched and swatted about by the wind-swept rain, and stepped back into the protection field of the Tardis.

“A _very_ fine ship,” he murmured impressed, stroking the wall gently.

The Doctor smiled briefly.

Everywhere was darkness and chill, the downpour overwhelming.

“Maybe ye can wait out the storm before goin' on your investigation, what say ya, huh?”

“What did I say about that word?” mock-grumbled the Doctor.

A lightning struck a miser tree just a dozen steps from them, cracking the trunk: the upper part of it fell through the swirling wind and pouring rain with slow, ponderous inevitability, leaving a charred half behind, the smell of ozone heavy even in the rain.

“Reminds me of that day in the rain with good ol' Ben Franklin,” remarked the Doctor urbanely.

“Who?”

“Ben Franklin, up in Philadelphia. That was... oh, ages ago. And also sort of about now, broadly speaking, but let's not go there.”

“Franklin,” mused Captain Sparrow. “Now why wouldat name be familiar, I wonder?”

“That was a good day,” chattered the Doctor. “We played with kites, and then I got electrocuted.”

“Kites!” exclaimed Sparrow with satisfaction. “Aye, that'd be it. I remember tha lad now.”

“Oh? You met him?”

“Aye. I be tha one what taught him that trick with the kite and the key. Jolly good fun, that was. Heard the lad been makin' a name for hisself wit' it. Good for him, says I.”

The Doctor looked at him strangely, half indignant, half bursting with laughter.

With a sigh, he draped his wet coat on the railing and closed the door, shutting the howling storm out. “Right. Plan B, then.”

Going back to the console, he started calling up measurements from the Tardis many and keen sensors, fingers flying over keyboards and touch-screens, until a three-dimensional map of the whole island emerged from the datasets, slowly rotating on its axis and showing the internal structure and composition of the area in colourful richness of details.

“Interesting,” muttered Captain Sparrow, leaning close to the Doctor to better peer at the brightly coloured areas, blinking spots helpfully highlighting the position of geological deposits, geothermal currents and groundwater reservoirs.

“Exploration geophysics at its best,” agreed the Doctor, abstractedly smug, and pushed the pirate gently away while he took in the measurement values and geodetic coordinates and gravity vectors and listed anomalies scrolling along; committing the subsurface structure of the area to memory – the spatial distribution of rock units, the presence of faults, folds and intrusive rocks – he tried to puzzle out the likely places where someone might hide something.

And then, because keeping quiet just wasn't his style, he started explaining haphazardly: “It's a generic combination of mapping softwares, processing and displaying geospatial datasets – coast lines, rivers, magnetic fields, coronal mass ejections, interplanetary shock waves, what have you. Excellent for interplanetary imaging, really, and predicting space weather conditions – and of course, for visualizing multi-dimensional geographic data sets in a clear projection...”

“Hmm,” was Sparrow's only comment.

They bent together over the screen, studying intently the colourful images the Doctor was expertly examining from all points of view.

“Of course, satellite imagery and digital elevation models are a few centuries in your future,” he said conversationally. “No GPS in this century, but on the other hand, no power lines, haul roads, and active mining pits either, that would create interference with my scanning tools, so traditional geophysical tools are perfectly accurate. Much better than stumbling around with nothing but pilot books--”

Sparrow interrupted him: “Whatever ye're lookin' for... it's prob'ly there,” he pointed knowledgeably, tapping a dirty finger heavy with rings on an area of the blinking screen.

“Yes,” murmured the Doctor absently. “You're right, at that... how do you know?” he asked in amazement.

“A map is a map no matter how fancy. An' if ye want a man what knows a map, then I'm the pirate for ya,” said Sparrow proudly.

The Doctor blinked. “Fair enough.”

Under the Doctor's coaxing, the Tardis obligingly moved a little further and downwards, materializing in the aimed-for cave.

Captain Sparrow had found himself a spot where he could lean comfortably on the console, not disturbing any button or lever but generally getting in the Doctor's way any time his usual dance around the controls brought him past the pirate.

“Now why would there be a map if there ain't no treasure to find, I wonder?” he asked abruptly.

“There is a treasure,” retorted the Doctor testily. “Of sorts. It might not be some sparkly rock or pretty ring, but I'll have you know that in the right places – and times – technology such as what I expect to find here would be considered much more precious than any jewellery.”

Sparrow nodded slowly: “Aye. Not all treasure is silver and gold, mate. I know.”

“I'm glad you realize that.”

Grabbing his coat and holding it up to evaluate its wetness levels, the Doctor was too distracted to pay attention to the glint in the pirate's eye.

Sparrow gave the wet coat a superior look, brushed some dust off his own, perfectly dry coat with mock-fastidiousness and went on making his point: “So what ye think needs be found, which we don't know what might be, but know it prob'ly be purposeful to find it, is somethin' what might be _fruitful_ to find, were one to bring it to the right market?”

“Yes, yes,” said the Doctor distractedly, trying to decide if he could be satisfied with his beloved coat being only slightly less than soaked and also mildly chilly, and whether it wouldn't be better to sonic it clean or dry-clean it or something before wearing it, even if it meant going out in just his suit jacket. “We're looking for, most likely, a piece of technology that has unexpected and hopefully unintended effects on the local fauna,” he explained without much thought. “It will in all likelihood look like a small metal chest, possibly with a great deal of dials, lenses and graduated tubes.”

“An artefact! Ah, now we're talkin',” smiled the pirate unnervingly.

The Doctor raised his head from his coat, bewildered: “What?”

Sparrow clapped his hands once. “Well Doctor, I've changed me mind. If ya lead the way, I promise I shall help you recover this artefact of yours and happily share in the profitable selling of it in those said markets.”

“What?!”

“Do we have an accord?” Sparrow smiled winningly.

The Doctor shook his head, amused. “Oh, very well then. Allons-y!”

And with that, he strode to the door with a bounce in his step, leaving his soppy coat behind.

The underground of the small island was a lot more pleasant than its surface, for the simple but important reason that the rain couldn't get there.

As cavernous rocky underground spaces went, however, it was fairly unremarkable.

The Doctor had seen much more impressive spelunks, crevices and cavities, even here on Earth – and let's not talk about the majesty of Rùulian underwater caves, where the sunlight shining through and the serpentine veins in the rocks combined to create the most beautiful emerald reflections in the interconnected tunnels, or the breathtaking, intricate and massive Seven Levels of Staffalt, on the planet Miwere, where entire cities were hewn out of the typical, hexagonally-jointed basalt rocks, or Ygrayl's Hideout, in the southern hemisphere of Pasiphae, with its towering stalagmites, dripping stalactites and mind bogglingly large crystal formations.

This was just a mundane underground hall, a bit on the smallish size. It was dark and dank and littered with boulders; green algae decorated its walls and the smell of sea was strong even though the water didn't reach this area; it couldn't be far in any case, because the echoes of the waves made eerie sounds that filled the atmosphere.

With a grimace, the Doctor noticed that the place was home to a roost of nocturnal long-tongued bats. Bats were horrid. Rats with wings, really. If they got anywhere near his hair... he fingered the sonic screwdriver in his pocket.

Captain Sparrow moved off confidently, with the ease of a man used to hide ill-gotten goods (and, on occasion, himself and his crew) in places such as this, and walked directly into an invisible wall, with force enough that he stumbled backward with a startled “Oof”.

The Doctor's eyes widened. He whipped out the sonic screwdriver and pointed it quickly, scanning the area before them. It looked as if they ought to be able to walk right through, yet Sparrow's questing hand would not move forward.

The pirate leaned over with a hand outstretched and pressed at the barrier, tentatively at first, then with more and more force, then with both hands, then pushing with a shoulder, almost bouncing off it with a delighted grin.

“That's new,” he commented happily, grabbing a piece of rock and throwing it at what looked like thin air. He grinned when it ricocheted. “What is it?”

“Don't panic,” said the Doctor quickly.

“I'm not panickin'. It's right fun,” replied the pirate, who was now trying ineffectually to throw coins through the barrier and enthusiastically catching them when they bounced back at high speed.

“It's a force field. It's probably to keep us out. Or to keep something in. Can't decide what's the worst option... In any case, I doubt it extends much, this kind of things takes a lot of energy.” The Doctor started moving the sonic screwdriver in arcs here and there over the invisible barrier, trying to map out its extension. “I should be able to trace its source. Or at least find its boundaries...”

Captain Sparrow had graduated his impromptu game to a combination of throws and juggling, using now several coins and making his coat sway wildly as he threw and caught his coins with great flair.

When one spun out of control, he jumped and twisted to keep it in the game, almost impaled himself on a rocky outcrop, caught the coin at the last minute before it hit the irregular bottom of the cave and launched it quickly off just above the ground...

And it went cleanly through – all the way to the opposite wall of the cavern.

His face fell.

The rest of the coins fell too, some bouncing painfully off him or the walls before tinkling to the floor.

The Doctor patted him on the shoulder: “Good job. Told you it takes too much energy to cover a whole wall... wouldn't have thought to check below it, though. Well done, you!”

Then threw himself down on the ground and started crawling on his belly to pass under the force field.

The cave beyond the invisible barrier wasn't any different, except that something indefinable was humming in the atmosphere, a droning not-quite-buzz that wasn't so much heard as felt in the irritation of nerves it caused.

“That'd be the field generator,” murmured the Doctor, changing the setting of the sonic screwdriver to play hot-warm-cold. “This way.”

It did not take long to locate the source of the vibrating hum and it turned out to be underneath the rock bed they were walking on.

The Doctor bounced in place, trying to decide if they should take the Tardis down or if there was an easy way to reach the generator that had to be beneath him or--

“I believe I've found our way down,” called Sparrow, grabbing his attention. He was kneeling, with an unnerving smile, over something that looked like... well...

“Trapdoor,” said the Doctor with resigned realization. “You've found a trapdoor.”

“Aye.”

“Not a good word, 'trapdoor'. Never met a trapdoor I liked. In fact, I recall actively disliking most of them.”

“Some trapdoors are useful,” countered the pirate. “This one time, I got marooned on an island, horrible business, _not_ my fault at all. I found this trapdoor and what do you think it hid? Rum!” He beamed with remembered enthusiasm. “Turned out the rum runners used the island as a cache, I spent three days lying on the beach drinking to me heart's content, then they came past and I was able to barter passage off. Lovely times.”

The Doctor regarded him steadily: “I don't think we'll find any rum below this.”

But the pirate was already heaving the metal trapdoor up.

There wasn't any rum, of course.

There was, however, an old-looking and rusty metal contraption whose function was quite clearly to generate power; the Doctor thought it looked Denebian – it had the typical squat design and lack of efficiency of their Post-Machine Era technology.

The buzzing hum was suddenly much louder; it wasn't distracting Captain Sparrow, however, who was busy observing the surroundings rather than the machine.

“There's a door over there,” he told the Doctor off-handedly, pointing downwards to the right with the detached air of someone who's commenting on the terrible weather from the cosy refuge of his own living room.

Nothing in his attitude suggested the mentioned door could have any kind of impact on his life; the Doctor nevertheless took it as an invitation.

“Right. Let's go!” he exclaimed, gesturing for the pirate to precede him.

Sparrow gave him a hard look and didn't move.

The Doctor rolled his eyes and scowled.

The pirate smiled affably.

“Fine! I'll go first.”

They climbed down, slipped and dropped onto the machine and to its basement with little grace but also no harm to their limbs and moved on to examine the door – a floor-to-ceiling metal slab with no apparent handle or hinges, which slowly started to buckle and shakily sink into the ground under the sonic screwdriver's coaxing.

They exchanged a glance – the Doctor clutching his buzzing sonic screwdriver, the pirate holding his worn-out hanger with its longish blade; Sparrow stepped back courteously, letting the Doctor be the one to risk life and limb facing whatever lay beyond.

Moving cautiously in the darkness, the Doctor gained the impression of a bigger space; touch quickly proved that the walls were tiled and a bit of fiddling on his part lit up a series of lamps placed at regular intervals: those that weren't broken gave off a neon-bright light.

The bigger cavern, where the touch of Nature had been almost entirely tamed by Human hands (or, as the Doctor suspected, Denebian eight-fingered paws), was filled with scattered machines and various dust-covered pieces of equipment, mostly with tubes and cables draped all over, in the kind of haphazard order of laboratories anywhere.

Tarnished pipes ran in ordered, geometric patterns over most walls, gleaming dully against the dark tiles; most workstations had dusty keyboards covered by sunken oval keys with raised borders, in the odd, eight-by-eight clusters typical of Denebian computers.

Despite everything being in various states of disrepair, the overall impression was still of a harmonious union of blown glass, smooth wood and polished metal which spoke of serious money having gone into creating the place.

A wide empty ditch ran through the room length-wise for reasons unknown; barren cages and penned areas were shunted in the corners.

The Doctor quickly set to examine the endless clusters of dials, switches and buttons, determined to make sense of what was obviously a research lab. Something was dancing in his memory, a niggling thought that maybe he knew this, had seen something like it before...

“This is rather impressive. The whole place is organized very carefully to process species, study and modify their genetic make-up and release them under controlled circumstances. Nanoimplants! It's quite amazing. And molecular manipulation. And... oh! Look at this!”

He had his specs on and was examining the principal piece of equipment in the abandoned laboratory, a huge cylinder connected to a small cage and to an impressive set of pipes and containers.

“That area over there is all about capturing local species and tinkering with them, but this? This is about introducing alien species on Earth! Suppose it explains the carnivorous parrot, for one: must have been a Denebian wrako really. It's an impressive undertaking – completely abandoned, obviously, but when it was active, it must have been something indeed... It's a whole genetics lab – a wide-spread research project. Well thought-out, too – all done very carefully, taking care not to damage or radically alter the existing ecosystems; whoever was in charge of these experiments knew what they were doing.”

He took his spectacles off and mused: “Must have been abandoned for a good long while though... and they didn't clean up after themselves: the modified species they were introducing into the environment will spread and go native, so to speak. Hence the eventual glowing soldiers. I wonder what happened?”

Captain Sparrow paid little attention to the Doctor's ramblings and occupied himself with examining and discarding everything that wasn't nailed down. He found very little that could catch his interest, except for a set of odd looking, oval little plaquettes in a drawer, which he recognized as gold and disappeared nonchalantly in his coat pockets. One never knew when such things might come in handy, after all.

“A targeted teleport!” cried the Doctor suddenly, from the other side of the room, in a tone that could have been enthusiasm or dismay, or both at once.

“A what?” asked the pirate, unsure whether to be interested or not.

“It sends things, or more likely, animal specimens, from a predetermined source point, let's say, oh, probably the main lab on Deneb II, to this arrival area. Definitely advanced for that culture.”

“An artefact what calls monsters to its position,” Sparrow mused. “A man could use this.”

“Don't go getting ideas,” scolded the Doctor.

The pirate shrugged.

His wanderings had finally taken him to the farthest area of the weird laboratory, where a row of odd cube-like things with entire panels of inviting buttons spread out before them beckoned him.

They looked not entirely unlike the blinking boxes where the Doctor had made the fascinating map appear, if far less pleasing to the eye, only these were dead or broken or something. The Doctor had made things happen on them by pressing buttons, however, so Sparrow figured he might as well give it a try himself.

He poked a button. Then another. Then two at a time, then five – using his whole forearm. He was rather getting a taste for it.

And then some device began to beep.

Loudly, obnoxiously and obviously in a not-good way.

Suddenly horrified, Sparrow scrambled to shush the thing, jerking to press more buttons in the hope of stopping it, but unable to bring himself to decide which ones and stopping short of the panels with twitchy movements.

“Don't- dont' do that,” he hissed to the pulsing light that had lit over his head. “Why’re ye doing that?”

The Doctor ran up to him: “What did you do?”

Not at all suffering from Jack's misgivings about possibly making things worse, he started hitting random buttons at high speed.

“What are you doin'?” yelled Sparrow, eyes widening in alarm.

“I’m going to get us out of this," retorted the Time Lord, though truthfully, he didn't know how. Yet.

“You’re hitting buttons at random!”

“I’m not,” he protested. “There’s a highly scientific process to all this! I started at the upper left hand corner and am moving down to the bottom right--”

That gave the pirate pause. “Smart,” he decided after an instant, and started doing the same at the lower right corner. “Meet ya in tha middle.”

They worked quickly and surprisingly well together, but nothing they did had much effect on the monotone siren wailing all around them.

It was an alarm, the Doctor realized abruptly. It was an alarm, and it was calling someone, or possibly some _thing_ , to deal with the intruders. Namely, them.

Oh, this was bad. This was very, very bad. And there wasn't time to climb back the way they'd come.

Luckily, there was another door – a big, metal one, very wide: more of a gate than a door, right at one end of the large ditch.

Something one of them did made it start to shake as if it was about to open. The Doctor wasn't particularly interested in _what_ , exactly; not right at that moment. That it could open was good enough.

“This way,” he yelled confidently, jumping down into the ditch and running towards it.

They were only half-way when the gate did, indeed, open and a rush of sea water fell in, invading the sunken area and swamping them, overwhelming them with a mighty wave.

Respiratory bypass kicking in, the Doctor forced himself to his feet and grabbed a spluttering Sparrow, helping him to withstand the flooding water.

“Time to go,” he ordered, standing up and pulling his companion over to the door again, splashing and waddling through the calming waves as fast as he could.

A big, tentacled shadow appeared unexpectedly on their path.

He stopped short.

“Oh. _Oh!_ That's what a bommarian squid is doing on Earth! It's a guard dog!”

The wailing alarm was calling it back to the laboratory and, like a well-trained pet, the huge squid was hurrying to deal with the intruders.

Moving on instinct, the Doctor threw himself to the side and heaved himself up onto the sort of bank where the water level had not reached yet. Sparrow was only a breath behind him and the Time Lord grabbed him by the arm and started running in the opposite direction.

Behind them, the echoing sounds of tentacles slapping the waves and the tiles hounded them; although surprisingly, there was no cracking or crashing, as if the giant squid was carefully avoiding all machinery. Well-trained guard dog indeed.

They increased their speed, trying to ignore the alarm noise pounding in their heads; the Doctor was dragging the pirate by the arm and Sparrow was flailing wildly about and the squid was chasing them and _hadn't they done this bit already_?

“What is a kraken doin' in a bloody scientist's lair?!” complained Jack Sparrow as he ran.

“It's not a kraken. It's a bommarian squid,” replied the Doctor automatically.

“Of course it's a bleedin' kraken!”

They kept running, dodging the equipment in the deserted laboratory; the Doctor blindly pointed the sonic screwdriver at whatever they passed, hoping against hope it might activate _something_ that would _somehow_ slow the giant squid down.

“Over there!” yelled Sparrow, pointing to a discreet, square door to the side they hadn't noticed before, and the Doctor made a beeline for it, bursting through it only to stop abruptly on the edge of a small, water-filled canal and almost plunging into it head-first when Sparrow bashed into his back.

For a moment they teetered, arms flailing and grabbing at each other, before the Doctor managed to regain some semblance of balance and quickly pushed the staggering pirate past him onto the narrow edge, slamming the square door behind them.

It didn't do much good: their pursuer shattered it with a mighty hit almost before they'd cleared it.

“Boat!” yelled Sparrow, more happily than the situation warranted.

There was, indeed, a rickety, dirty, moss-stained boat that occupied most of the narrow canal, tied to an overhead cable like a poor imitation of a hand-operated cable ferry; in a moment they were onto it, making it bob and wobble precariously under their weight.

A tentacle slamming down missed it by mere inches.

The tunnel was, luckily, too narrow for the bommarian squid to squeeze itself into it, which gave them some respite. Unfortunately, the squid had tentacles – strong, gummy and above all _long_ tentacles – which gave _it_ an unfair advantage.

They put their all into heaving the unstable boat _away_ , dreading at any moment the feel of powerful suckers on their exposed backs.

“Any brilliant idea?” gasped Sparrow, straining to see in the dimming, almost waned light from the laboratory behind them. “Because honestly, mate. Bein' squeezed to bits by a kraken? Not fun.”

“It's not a kraken,” replied the Doctor distractedly, mind racing.

The pirate rolled his eyes as they ducked a last, weak, grasping effort of the viscid appendages and finally heaved themselves out of range.

“Look, mate. I know krakens. I was eaten by a kraken once!” he cried. “I can tell when one's on me tail!”

“ _What?_ ”

The boat hit a wall unexpectedly with a creaking noise and a thorough shudder and squinting in the darkness, they realized they'd reached the end of the brief canal. They quickly found by touch another square door to the side, which led them abruptly back where they'd started, the generator looking somehow larger than it had appeared before.

“Maintenance tunnel,” muttered the Doctor, as the layout of the place gained sense in his mind; Sparrow grasped and kicked ineffectually at the smooth metal, seeking a way to get himself up.

The buzzing hum filling the area seemed to get louder now that the sounds of the tentacled menace had faded away. Perking up their ears to try and guess the squid's position, they surmised it was giving up on the narrow tunnel. Would it be intelligent enough to seek them out from the other entrance to the space they were in?

They took cover behind the generator and the Doctor quickly raised and dead-lock sealed the door in front of them, just in case.

“What we need,” said Sparrow knowledgeably, “is a plan.”

“A plan. Yes! Excellent idea. I'm sure one will come to mind in a minute. Don't worry,” babbled the Doctor.

“I rather think we don't have a minute, mate.”

A booming hit to the door proved the pirate right. Apparently, the tentacled guard dog was, indeed, intelligent enough to work out the location of its prey and how to access it.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” the Doctor said, running a hand through his hair frantically.

“Agreed.” Sparrow winced at the still wailing alarm, then narrowed his eyes: “This damn siren is what's calling the kraken, innit?” he worked out.

“Bommarian squid.”

“What?”

“It's a bommarian squid, not a kraken. Krakens are much, much bigger. And more concerned with ships than tiny people like you and me.”

“Well maybe this is a dwarf kraken. Or a kid kraken!” Sparrow stopped short and gained a horrified look: “No, no, no, no. Forget I said that. It's not a kid kraken. I don't want to think it's a kid kraken. I don't want to think there might be a _mum_ kraken nearby!” He shuddered, then scowled at the Doctor. “And krakens can be plenty interested in eating people. I'm talking from experience here!”

The Doctor stared at him, wide-eyed.

A series of hits bent the door alarmingly. It would not last long under the very determined assault.

Impatiently, the pirate waved the irrelevant discussion away. “This is calling the huge squid thing, innit? Tha’s why it keeps gettin' at us.”

“Yes,” the Doctor allowed.

“Well, then, let's turn the bloody thing off! Make the beastie think it's done what's supposed to do and now it can go – and incidentally, leave us alone.”

“Oh, that's brilliant!” cried the Doctor, suddenly enthusiastic. He fiddled with the sonic screwdriver and turned to the generator with renewed determination.

The deformated door shuddered and groaned as the bommarian squid battered it. It began, slowly, to tear, tentacles sneaking through and wrapping themselves around it to rend it more easily.

“Whatever ye're doin', I hope ye're doin' it fast!” said Sparrow, eyes riveted on the splintering door with a very fixed expression.

The Doctor's manic grin popped up behind the generator: “Oh, just you watch me!”

And with a theatrical pointing of the sonic screwdriver, he smiled in satisfaction as smoke came out of the groaning, humming machine, quickly followed by a small explosion and leaping flames.

Sparrow jumped away and glared at the generator, but a moment later the wailing siren vanished so abruptly it left their ears ringing and in his relief, he graciously forgave the machine for startling him.

The door caved loudly at last and they flinched, ducking behind the generator again; but no suckers-dotted tentacle followed their movement. Instead, they could hear only a couple half-hearted hitting noises, some snapping and stroking, a few squeaks, even a twang, and sounds of rubber scratching stone.

The squid was leaving.

With a relieved breath, the Doctor jumped up and hurried to peer through the mangled door into the laboratory.

The giant, hairy squid placed itself at one end of the large, water-filled ditch, gathering its tentacles about itself in what was clearly a trained pose; it quivered with expectation, both bulbous eyes staring fixedly forward, and gave the Doctor the distinct impression of a dog impatiently waiting for its due treat. He could almost see its non-existent tail waggling.

“Poor thing. It must be waiting for a reward for good behaviour, only there's no one left to give it anything...”

“I'm devastated to hear of its disappointment,” drawled Sparrow with heavy sarcasm.

He was sitting with his back against the now silent generator, legs stretched in front of him, and was playing with the gold plaquettes he'd fished out of its pocket. They were little more than two-inches long ovals, with tiny holes at both sides, which he guessed might be used to secure them to a bracelet or something.

“What's that?” asked the Doctor, intrigued.

The pirate turned the plaquettes over, showing the Time Lord the odd markings on them – a complex bunch of waving, sinuous lines which might be meant to represent a flower, or perhaps a woman's hair, or even a butterfly's wings.

“It's... I _know_ this,” said the Doctor in amazement. “Swanstein Group. It's a luxury cosmetic company! Rose loves their products, she... she used to...” he trailed off with sudden sadness. “Anyway.” He cleared his throat.

“Beautifying products?” asked Sparrow, eyebrows raising so high his forehead might disappear.

“Oh, yes. Prestige skincare, makeup and fragrances products, the whole lot.” He frowned for a moment, twirling the plaquette in one hand. Then he said, with careful determination: “I think, and I might be wrong but I really don't think I am, that all of this has to do with their attempt to expand their marked to Alumia. A research project like this would be just their style. Swanstein Group's greatest claim to success is that they've always tailored their products to whatever idea of good looks their customers held, never trying to impose or even define a hegemonic idea of glamour or seek uniformity of standards in the market. As their slogan says, they take beauty very seriously.”

“Alumia?”

Ignoring his companion's confusion, the Doctor warmed to his theory: “Weelll... look at this.” He pointed to a small relief in the metal, off to the side of the generator: straight lines formed a square without closing the perimeter of the shape and within it, tidy words read _Adanarians Creation Company –_ _Quality Guarantee_.

“It's a manufacturer stamp from Alumia – Deneb IV, from Earth's point of view,” explained the Doctor. “The planet has an impressive percentage of bioluminescent traits in most of its species, excluding, oddly enough, the dominant one. Why, the Woods of Mallonia are a wonder of that galaxy! And the luminescent trees have been planted all along the roads, to provide natural illumination during their long nights – Alumia is plunged into darkness for three-quarters of their standard day almost all year long...”

“They be the ones what call glowin' monsters here?” interrupted the pirate, studying the stamp with interest.

The Doctor shook his head: “No, I think it was a branch of Swanstein Group, and they were rather trying to _make_ animals luminescent, but the reason they were doing it was to discover and eventually sell make-up that could make the Aluminans glow, I reckon.”

Sparrow's eyebrows climbed high again: “Why?”

“Weelll, Aluminans think bioluminescence is the height of beauty. It's all a matter of philosophy, to them. Like I said, their ecosystem has a high number of bioluminescent species, but _they_ can't glow and of course, they started asking themselves _why_... and then religion got in the way. Now they think Mother Nature meant for everybody to be glowing, but they committed a sin and lost their chance. Achieving their glow is a big part of their belief system, their utmost goal in life, religiously speaking. Of course they'd want make-up that simulates it...”

The pirate's snort was as eloquent as a whole speech. The Doctor just shrugged. There were weirder beliefs out there, after all.

After a while, Sparrow said thoughtfully: “The kraken wasn't glowin'.”

“Weellll... why bother making your guard dog all pretty?”

Sparrow wrinkled his nose. “Not a dog.”

“Not a kraken.”

The pirate rolled his eyes.

The Doctor thrust his hands into the pockets of his rather wet trousers and pouted a little: it just wasn't the same without his coat to sweep back.

Jack Sparrow picked himself up with a sigh and swayed in place, fiddling with his effects and his hat until it lay just so.

“What now?” asked the pirate. “Your mystery's solved, right?”

“Yeah... yes, I think it is. We'll probably never know why the Swanstein representatives decided that Earth was the perfect place to experiment on this, or where they got their hands on timetravelling technology, but... yeah. All in all, mystery solved.”

“What are you goin' to do about it?”

“Oh, it's like you said. Pretty harmless,” said the Doctor airily. “Likely as not, the worst long-term consequence will be all those foolish tourists swimming in the Bahia Fosforescente on moonless nights. Hardly dangerous, that. Ever been there?”

“When I was a lad, yeah. Once. I hated the mangrove river.” Sparrow's glazed over eyes, pointed unseeingly at the ground, spoke of horrors better forgotten.

The Doctor wisely didn't inquire.

“I didn't much like it either,” he mused irrelevantly. “Ripples and waves of light streaming from wiggling fingers kind of lose their charm if you know they're really one-celled protozoa reacting to a disturbance.”

He sighed and started climbing the generator to get himself out of the trapdoor above them. “Come on,” he called the pirate. “Nothing left to do here. I'll just drop a word to the Shadow Proclamation about illegal experimenting on a Level 5 planet, they'll handle it as they see fit.”

Sparrow didn't have anything to contribute to that and simply heaved himself out as well.

Rather than following the Doctor into the Tardis, however, the pirate made his way to an opening through which the surface of the island and the sky above it were visible.

The storm had passed, leaving the air heavy and smelling of ozone. Night had fallen and the sound of waves crashing upon rocks was a loud roar in the darkness. Jack Sparrow stared hard at the stars shining brightly in the freshly washed sky, committing them to memory.

“Are you coming or what?” called the Doctor, popping his head out of the blue door.

Sparrow made his way slowly towards the frankly magnificent ship that, for some odd reason, looked like a big blue box.

“Glowing trees,” he said out of the blue.

“What?”

“That's what you said. Along the streets.”

The Doctor frowned, then lit up: “Oh! Oh, yes. On Alumia, you mean? Yes, that's right. Amazingly beautiful woods, and yes, they plant glowing trees along the major roads...”

“I should like to see them,” said Sparrow thoughtfully.

The Doctor beamed manically. “Brilliant!”

And that was how Captain Jack Sparrow found himself travelling to a weird planet full of glowing beings with the mysterious Doctor.

And of course, that first trip led to another when the Doctor mentioned hypervodka – which wasn't as good as rum, sadly, but not bad either. And then a side trip to the First Pastafarian Colony on Sevenseas, where Captain Sparrow was hailed as a prophet and quite enjoyed his popularity, at least until they had to make a quick escape following a misunderstanding about some gold rings that had accidentally passed hands in a not-entirely-legal way.

“ _Not_ my fault,” he sniffed when the Doctor glared at him.

“ _Jack.”_

The pirate smiled innocently: “What can I say? I love jewellery.”

The Doctor rolled his eyes.

(And if their brief stint on Sevenseas led to the formation of a sect that governed the Colony for eight generations, managed to create syntharum despite the lack of sugarcane on the planet, and incidentally, venerated hats – the Doctor didn't mention it).

“Where would you like to go next?” he asked instead.

Jack Sparrow pondered the question carefully. “London.”

The Doctor's eyes widened slowly in vague surprise: “Seriously?”

Jack gave him a vacuous look: “I've been to Singapore already,” he explained courteously.

The Doctor blinked: “Ah!” He broke into an unnerving smile: “London it is!”

He darted and jumped around the console with great energy. “Sorry, I don't much like 18th  century London. Too much horse manure. And all those fire hazards.” The Tardis materialized with her usual wheezing, trumpeting sound and the Doctor smiled proudly at his companion. “How about the Victorian age, instead? Much better, even with the smell and the soot. I hope you don't mind?”

Sparrow cocked his head, pondering the odd question. Eventually, he ventured to inquire: “Is there rum to be had in this here time?”

The Doctor shrugged: “I imagine so. That's one drink humanity continued producing even after all 37 species of sugarcane were extinct.”

A glint of gold shone from the pirate's sudden, tight smile: “Good enough,” he proclaimed, and proceeded to stride forward into the chaos of a 21st century main road, twirling and jerking randomly like a drunken sailor, utterly unconcerned with the impressive number of near-death experiences he was raking together, or the panicky reactions of the many drivers, bikers and jaywalkers that he was startling, disrupting and generally putting in harm's way (or in each other's collision courses).


	10. The Trip...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Could I prevail onto you to help me find said unkempt and drunkard companion – he's a pirate, you see, and loose on modern day London...”  
> “Oh, dear.” John fought down the laughter building inside him.  
> Sherlock, for his part, grinned widely: “Oh, Doctor. It shall be no trouble at all..."

“Ah!...” was the first thing the Doctor said when he stepped out of the Tardis in Captain Sparrow's wake and very nearly got run over by a red, double-decker bus within the first ten seconds. “I think I got the date a bit wrong.”

He frowned, slipping his hands into his coat pockets, and wrinkled his nose at the front of Selfridges department store before him. West End, then. He tasted the air thoughtfully. Fall of 2010, oh, not a bad year; bit wet perhaps. Now. Where was the pirate?

There were approximately three hundred twenty people around him, all busy walking, hugging, shopping, quarrelling, chatting on their phones or whatnot, but none of them was the coat-wearing, perpetually swaying, rum-seeking companion he needed to find!

A cab honked at him and he sniffed, but obligingly got himself off the road and onto the pavement, ignoring the odd or glowering looks he was getting because he wasn't letting the mass of people hurrying about sweep him up in their flux.

It was one of those rare October days that are nearly perfect. Even in grey, 21st century London, the sky seemed to stretch overhead in a glorious, joyous shade of blue, the silhouette of buildings rising powerfully against it; the trees he could see were a triumph of rust, burgundy, gold and orange, making everything look prettier than it really was.

It was wonderful weather for a walk in the woods. Or a scenic drive by the sea. Or making a pile of leaves and jumping in them. _Not_ for attempting to chase down a pirate in a bustling city!

The Doctor sighed deeply. What was it with companions and wandering off, seriously? Rose was always-- Right. Never mind. No thinking of that. How had Sparrow managed to disappear in the half a minute he'd spent risking his life because of traffic? There was absolutely no trace of him in the street. One would think a man like him would stand out in the 21st century! Then again, this was London.

Maybe he should try and build something that would help him. A... pirate tracker. No, how would it tell a pirate apart from a fisherman? He didn't want to have to check every pool and pond in the city! A timetravel monitoring system? Except there were bound to be a fair few timetravellers in London right now, himself not last, so it probably wouldn't narrow his search down… Oh! He could do both! A timey-wimey detector wired for piracy! Yes! He was sure that he had all the necessary to cobble it together in the Tardis. Much more efficient than going around looking at random or, I don't know, asking people. He was rubbish at the domestic approach anyway, that was always more Rose's-- Right. Never mind. Tracking gizmo. Better start right away.

Decided, he marched back to his ship.

He hadn't been working long when he was interrupted, however. By someone knocking.

He stared at the Tardis door. “...What?”

Who could possibly be knocking at the Tardis door? People didn't do that! Did they? Maybe it was Sparrow. Had he come back on his own? That would be convenient.

He made his way to the door and opened it with a smile, and blinked.

A short, sandy-haired man with a round face and kind eyes, wearing a leather jacket over a chequered shirt and a rather dreadful beige jumper, was staring at him, a fist still raised to knock: his bright smile faded to puzzlement and he blinked rapidly, as if trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

“John Watson, as I live and breathe!” the Time Lord grinned, nearly ear-to-ear. “Marvellous to see you, my friend! How's all the detecting going?”

“Wha… oh!” John's eyes widened. “Oh, ah… Doctor?” he sounded only slightly uncertain.

“Well, of course! Who did you expect, Good Queen Bess?” He frowned momentarily. “That reminds me, I should really find out why she's so angry at me...”

John was smiling widely again: “You've regenerated!”

“Oh. Oh! Yes, of course. New face. Not ginger. Pity that… Still. What do you think?” He ran a hand over his chin, preening just a little.

A tall figure in a black coat, with unruly curls and impatient, brisk manners came up behind John and gave the Doctor a thorough once-over, taking in the tall, slim frame, finely boned hands and face, and large, dark brown eyes, and the myriad little details that were obviously telling him more than words could.

“Doctor,” he nodded in greeting, the barest uncertainty lurking in his clear, verdigris eyes, but no trace of it in his tone.

“That's me! A brand new me!” said the Doctor, far too cheerfully. “Sherlock Holmes, oh! This is brilliant!”

Sherlock's razor-sharp gaze examined him, top to bottom.

“You've regenerated. Obvious,” he commented absently. “You've lost Rose and are still mourning her. You don't have a steady companion at the moment, but you've just met someone you hope might travel with you for a bit – a man, with no personal hygiene to speak of and an unhealthy fondness for rum.”

A barest moment passed, a dark shadow stealing over the Time Lord's face as he swallowed convulsively, but quick as fire the big smile returned, if with a pained edge: “Impressive as always,” the Doctor commented softly. “Now, could I prevail onto you to help me find said unkempt and drunkard companion – he's a pirate, you see, and loose on modern day London...”

“Oh, dear.” John fought down the laughter building inside him.

Sherlock, for his part, grinned widely: “Oh, Doctor. It shall be _no trouble_ at all...”

* * *

 

Famous. Last. Words.

* * *

 

“That man is completely unpredictable!” shouted Sherlock hours later.

“Oh, you love it, admit it,” said John mildly, savouring his half-a-sandwich-on-the-go and counting himself lucky that he'd got as much in the middle of a case. “A real challenge and all.”

Sherlock paused, looking, if possible, faintly embarrassed. “I do,” he admitted at length. “His sheer changeableness is... intriguing.”

They'd followed the surprisingly scant traces of a pirate's passage up and down London, run entirely too much (as was rather their usual style) and talked to all sorts of people (mostly without much effect).

They'd caught a lucky break when a rather shrill woman with curlers in her hair had made a point to describe, _at length_ , the very smelly weirdo that had invaded her back garden; they'd then been distracted by no less than two conventions, one filled with enthusiastic comics aficionados (“Sherlock, how exactly did you go from 'comics are an idiotic waste of time' to almost coming to blows with that spotty teenager over a copy of Dave Cockrum's _Nightcrawler_?” - “John, this is nothing like those ridiculously unscientific cosmic rays nonsense. It's set in an alternate dimension entirely populated by alien pirates.” - “...So?” - “Alien pirates, John!”), the other with _Pirates of_ _Penzance_ fans (“Really, Doctor? You felt the urge to inform the world that you're 'the Very Model of a Modern Major-General'? At the top of your voice?” - “Gilbert and Sullivan, John! Of course I had to!”).

Then they'd been delayed by the examination of a theatre where far too many children in pirate costumes had congregated for a production of, appropriately, _Pirates!_ (“Not to doubt your famous method, Sherlock, but I'm fairly certain _my_ pirate is rather taller than these.” - “That doesn't signify, Doctor, if he's attempting to hide, this would be a good place to blend in!”).

They'd also ducked into pub after pub, and been chased out of at least two because of Sherlock's absent-minded and very poorly timed deductions (“God, Sherlock, you don't go telling a groom-to-be at the onset of his stag night that their fiancé is shagging their best friend!” – “But, John, it's true!”) and the Doctor's peculiar brand of annoying enthusiasm (“How was I supposed to know he'd get offended by the mention of spectacles? There's nothing wrong with wearing spectacles. _I_ wear spectacles. Occasionally.” - “Doctor, you called him Foureyes.” - “It wasn't an insult! He reminded me of the character! Anyway, on Devras III it'd be a compliment!...”).

They'd almost cornered their quarry in a cinema of all places (“The Tempest? Seriously?” - “Nothing wrong with Shakespeare, Sherlock.” - “No, indeed! Lovely man. Very charming. I must see him again some time.”) where the staff remembered the smelly pirate _very_ well (“Took me a whole bottle of deodorant, it did! Had to dry-clean the bloody chair! N ever had so many complaints since those teens had at it in the fifth row during _King Kong…”_ ) but somehow, he'd slipped through their fingers again.

But no matter how many people confirmed that they were getting close (“Oh, yeah, the pirate bloke! Cool costume, that, and did you see his acting? Mate, it's phenomenal!” - “Must be a publicity stunt, obviously, what will they think of next, I wonder?” - “Here, take my card, I'm a casting assistant, you see, if he should be looking for employment, I think I could find some parts for him...” - “Oh my gosh he was so dreamy! Do you have his number?”)...

...they still had not caught up with Captain Jack Sparrow.

It was frustrating and pleasing Sherlock in almost equal measure.

The Doctor, having decided at some point that the whole situation was more hilarious than dangerous (London wasn't on fire, after all, nobody was screaming bloody murder or doing something asinine like declare martial law or outlaw bananas, so really, everything was well), was grinning widely, hands in his pockets and leaning carelessly on the edge of the Tardis, where they'd returned to regroup.

John was shooting him half-hearted glares now and then. Sadly, they didn't seem to be very effective. Possibly because John was still feeling out of sorts and was, therefore, not at his best – the reason being, for once, not the impossible consulting annoyance that happened to be his best friend, but the very alien they were helping out.

Who had precipitated a rather unwanted identity crisis in the poor doctor and didn't even seem to care (the bloody git).

They'd taken the time, while they ran after Sherlock or let him brood during cab rides, to get somewhat reacquainted; but the Doctor's first question – “So how are you finding the 21 st  century?” – had rather thrown John for a loop.

“What?!” he'd asked intelligently.

“You comfortable here? Liking the convenience of football on TV?”

“I prefer rugby,” had corrected John automatically. “Wait a minute, what do you… I don't… I'm fairly sure I've never been anywhere... any _when_ else! ...Doctor? This is when I belong. Isn't it?”

“Oh, of course, of course! Yeah!” The Doctor had looked slightly uncomfortable. “Weelll… it is now, at any rate.”

John had dragged out his sternest, I-will-know-about-this-experiment-in-detail-or-so-help-me-Sherlock tone: “Doctor, what are you on about?”

“See, I'm a new man and everything now, but... I might have accidentally caused a bit of a paradox once during the Victorian era and you and your detective might sort of have been caught up in it.”

“What?!?”

“Don't look at me like that. How was I supposed to remember that your people re-did the same bloody war in the same bloody place 120 years later?”

“Afghanistan...” had breathed John in horrified realization.

“I knew you'd been shot during a tour of duty there – told you I'm a fan of your writings – so I used that as a focal point to re-establish the timeline I'd accidentally tangled. Only... I kind of picked the wrong war.”

“The wrong...” John had felt faint.

“Perfectly understandable mistake!” had protested the Doctor earnestly.

“You're telling me I'm supposed to have lived a century and a half ago?!”

“...More or less, more or less.”

“That's unbelievable!”

“The world rearranged without problems around it though. Most of your stories are even the same, you know.”

“How can they _possibly_ be the same?”

“No, really. It's just minor things, fashion details – it was 'A Study in Red', originally, not pink – or technological improvements, I think you two find the internet more user-friendly than a hand-written archive, don't you? But all the major players stayed the same. Irene Adler... Jim Moriarty... Mary Morstan...”

“Who?”

The Doctor had paused for a fraction of a moment: “It's alright. You'll like her.”

John had pondered the unexpected revelation, unsure what to feel. “Un-bloody-believable.”

“...Sorry.”

Sherlock, being Sherlock, had chosen that moment to barge in the conversation, proving he had overheard all of it even if he'd been ignoring them.

“I don't see what the problem is,” he'd stated haughtily. “John and I would have met anyway, correct?”

The Doctor had beamed at him: “I don't think there has ever been a timeline where you two weren't flatmates at one point or another. Famous partnership, yours.”

“In that case, it seems to me we're a lot better off.”

“Are we?” had asked John weakly.

Sherlock had raised an eyebrow: “Are you not fond of showers? International flights? The internet?”

“Ah!… Good points. Very good points.” John had nodded slowly. “I certainly like the internet. Love it, really."

"Good. Splendid. Molto bene!"

And that had been that… but John wasn't entirely sure he'd forgiven the mad alien completely. Yet. The idea that his life might not be _his_ life was... unsettling. No matter how better off he, indeed, probably was.

He was jolted out of his brief stint of introspection by Sherlock proclaiming imperiously: “I need to go into my mind palace.”

The consulting detective marched into the Tardis and John and the Doctor hurriedly followed.

John noticed happily that the console room hadn't changed much. The welcoming golds and oranges of the half-lights faded organically into the greenish and bluish hues – the overall effect was perhaps less underwater than the first time he'd seen it, and reminded him more of the Byzantine church he'd wandered into once, where the mosaics, heavy on gold and glassy colours, gave the air a similar, rich quality.

“Good to be back,” he murmured fondly, getting a twirling trill in reply.

Sherlock ignored everything and draped himself on the pilot seat as if he owned it, tenting his fingers before his mouth.

Giving the rather delighted Doctor an unnecessary apologetic glance, John said in his best let's-be-reasonable tone: “Ok, look, Sherlock. Let's just go over it all again.”

“No! Don't be an idiot, John. I need to _think_. I need to think like an 18 th century pirate.”

* * *

Said pirate was, at that very moment, contemplating a momentous decision.

And, less metaphorically, a hedge.

A rather weird hedge, what seemed to be watching him _back_. Most unnerving.

* * *

 

So far, it had been an incredibly interesting day, if rather devoid of good booze: moving through this future wasn't unlike his first time in Singapore, all in all.

Of course, this London was more complex and alien than the one he'd been to in the past, but he was used to feeling out of place and he'd learned not to let it bother him. He was a wanderer, wild in his freedom, belonging nowhere… but if you look at a thing from the right perspective, it can easily become its opposite: he belonged everywhere, he was free in his wildness, the world at large was his home. Savvy?

The one thing that left him astounded was the amount of lights. Lights of all sorts sparkled literally everywhere – in windows, by the streets, on every moving thing (including the odd, small boxes people seemed so intent on watching or talking into), even tracing all sort of words on walls and such.

The moving, too life-like paintings in several windows were rather disconcerting at first, too, but he soon concluded that, as they didn't truly interact with the viewers, they weren't too different from books after all – or perhaps newspapers. They did seem to deal with news and advertising mostly.

And the sheer quantity of people! He had never seen that many people all in the same place, not even in Singapore.

It was a tad overwhelming.

Not that he would let it bother him, but he had needed a few minutes to regroup at first. Luckily, darkened alleys were still available so far in the future and he'd gratefully ducked into the nearest one to find a little bit of quiet.

It was, to his satisfaction, entirely unremarkable and quite convenient, even if he had to slip through a gate (appallingly easy to break in) before he could be sufficiently away from the bustle of the main street, and wander through a couple well-kept courtyards to hide among piles of rubbish in huge bins.

He'd regarded them for a long few moments. They'd looked official.

He wondered if they were really dedicated to that particular function. He'd heard about London putting the cleaning under one uniform public management, and arranging for all the filth to be conveyed to the country as a health preservation measure. Might this be an effect of that decision? Perhaps that was why the city looked so oddly clean.

He thoroughly approved: he'd never let his own ship get in a sorry state and what is a city if not a ship with a lot more problems and a lot less freedom?

These waste bins, they seemed like a right smart idea.

On the other hand, he wasn't enthusiastic about the many shapes and sizes of horseless carriages that could be found literally everywhere. Horribly smelly, horribly noisy and quite dangerous to one's health and safety.

He wasn't any more enthusiastic about the skinny metal contraptions with wheels that had apparently replaced proper horses. The lack of manure might be pleasant, but it looked like it took _effort_ to use them. He simply couldn't approve.

Worst of all, there wasn't a proper ship to be found anywhere. Some oddly-shaped boats, more show-offy than practical if you asked him, and barges (apparently trade was a universal constant) but no _real_ ships. The modern age had clearly done nothing for transport.

The tall, unnaturally long, red carriages were rather useful, however. A bit of keen observation had revealed to him that one could, if one were to have the proper card-sized rectangle of strange material, jump on and off wherever one wanted and go about the city without much effort. They even had convenient big windows to keep an eye on things. So he'd swiped one of the said strange permits off an unsuspecting man, along with his wallet (couldn't hurt to have some local currency) and enjoyed a few random rides, trying to get the lay of the land.

People had the strangest reactions to him – it was quite amusing.

Some of the most irritated whomevers he'd met had clued him in to the fact that his smell was not particularly appreciated in these parts. A particularly shrill lady with an odd hairdo had gone so far as to take an oddly twisting water pump to him, somewhat more annoying than buckets, unfortunately, and drenched him completely while yelling that he should take a bath.

Such being a not altogether unusual occurrence (although he was usually much more drunk when it happened, an oversight he should really correct soon), he'd stood still until she'd run out of both water and insults and then moved on without a care, confident that his sea-weathered ensemble could and would dry out none the worse for wear.

Others had been far more enthusiastic about his presence, if somewhat perplexing. He still wasn't entirely certain of what a 'cosplayer' was, though he'd been accused of being one several times. There seemed to be no malice in the address, however, so it perhaps was not an insult.

He'd found the river soon enough – the Thames looked strangely clean, too – but still no good ships to be seen. He'd complained to a fellow-rider on the next red carriage he'd jumped on, and he'd been obliged with a whole list of sites where he could see 'historical vessels', including, if the man were to be believed, Drake's own Golden Hind. Now that would be something.

He wondered why they should be so difficult to find, however. Mayhap the future kept its ship in secrecy? That was right daft, that was. Like caging feral beasts. Bah!

The food though. Oh, the food! He couldn't remember ever eating so well, or so much.

He'd wandered into a covered market to find that, no exaggeration, it sold everything edible under the sun. Or under the strange bright lights that were so popular here, as it were.

He'd happily munched on familiar things like a banana (how had they even brought it so far without it losing its freshness?) and some crispy golden apples… and some ham and samples of a number of cheeses and very spicy breadsticks… and some _delicious_ pastries… and some more exotic fares like an oval fruit the size of a hen's egg, with bright green flesh dotted with tiny, black seeds and a sweetly tangy, unique flavour… and a baked flatbread topped with tomato sauce and all sorts of tasty things, that was apparently Italian (he should consider going to Italy, if they ate like that, he really should)...

The angry ladies with the bright shirts and the tight blue trousers that, he'd guessed, was the strange uniform of the place (not that he disapproved of women in trousers. Elizabeth had looked rather fetching in breeches. Still, it seemed odd to see so few skirts around. And no gowns to speak of. Rather a pity.) had been quietly, and then not so quietly, disapproving of his eating in the market (one should, it appeared, bring one's food out before eating, what seemed like an awful waste of time) and finally had called for reinforcements. Big, bulky, muscled reinforcements.

All too used to such meetings, he'd gracefully allowed them to not beat him up by opposing no resistance to their demands. No point in collecting bruises, really. Although he had pointed out that, as a foreigner, so to speak, he ought to be granted some leeway, savvy? They hadn't been impressed; but then, men like them seldom were.

They'd escorted him out rather forcefully – some things didn't change no matter how far one travelled, it seemed – but he'd easily discovered there were many of such covered markets, if one knew how to look, and if one was quick, one could certainly have his fill before facing expulsion.

He was very quick.

After a while, he'd got tired of the game and wandered randomly, swiping up a few of the odd ornaments what seemed to be in fashion (which were mostly garish and made in a strange, but obviously cheap, material he didn't particularly like; except for the little decoration in the general shape of the long red carriage: that one was dangling from his bandanna now) until a line of waiting people had caught his eye.

They were very… diverse. Young, old and in-between; rich and not-so-rich (at least going by the jewellery he could spy); men and women in equal numbers, a mix of races like you'd sooner see in Tortuga than in London, back in his time.

Now why would so many different people all be waiting patiently outside such a building? 'Twasn't a bank, he didn't think. That bode some investigatin'.

The comfortable seats had been a pleasant surprise, the sudden darkness a less pleasant one, the explosions of moving lights on the wall near well gave him a heart attack (good thing most everybody had given him a wide berth in choosing their seats) but when he got over his shock… oh, by the sea and stars. He'd been _enraptured._

He'd watched with glee as a strangely feminine Prospero conjured up a storm, a strangely skinned Caliban cursed creatively, spirits and magics no theatre could evoke blossomed under his wide eyes, flying through the air and breathing through the waters of an island what looked as real as if he was seeing it from his own Pearl, and fair Miranda at last found her love.

“Now that, that's the way to tell a story,” he'd told the youngsters what were giggling at him, grandly. He had seldom enjoyed Shakespeare so much.

Cinema. What a delicious treat.

Pity muscled grunts seemed intent on throwing him out of everywhere fun...

At last, night had fallen – even with all the confusing lights everywhere, he could tell – and he'd finally spared a thought for the good Doctor that had brought him here.

...But surely the man could look after himself?

With a shrug, he'd moved on to his next order of business.

Find a tavern.

For rum, primarily – he'd finished all three of his hidden flasks and he really needed to replenish them soon – but not only that: after all, he'd had some confirmations already that human nature will never stray far from what he was used to, not in essentials, no matter how far in space or time he might go; and so, a pub of some sort would logically still be the place to go to find out whatever it is that one should find out, were one confident that one would, indeed, find it out, even if one didn't know what one should want to find out.

As soon as he'd turned his efforts to the purpose, London had proved itself still reliable in its offer of many and varied drink holes. Finally!

Some were too odd for his tastes, too filled with headache-inducing bright lights and weird little flashes from the ubiquitous little boxes everybody carried around, but it'd been easy to gravitate towards the few that were small and darkish and more familiar than anything he'd seen ever since he'd met the mysterious Doctor.

They were still loud, quite appropriately, though less with the roudiness of patrons and more because of the music every building in the future seemed to be filled with. That no musician was to be seen was, he'd slowly come to realize, a sign of the times. Mayhap they were all hidden? He'd heard of stranger customs. As the evening went on more and more voices added themselves to the background anyway, belting out unfamiliar tunes with familiar boozy abandon. 'Twas a sign of a good time bein' had.

The fog of smoke hanging in the air, that slightly sticky feeling under foot from the years of stale beer spilt and soaked into the wooden floor, the smell of beer oozing from the walls, the circles of liquid on the counter top… all had helped him feel right at home.

And beer was good. Not as good as rum but... good enough.

On the down side, information gathering had been more difficult than he'd expected. The reason being, his many and varied language skills were letting him down.

Oh, they were all speaking the King's English, the folks here, he was fairly sure, but somehow or other, 'twas a foreign language all the same!

Still. It had not been a total loss. People'd kept laughing and cheering as if he was a travelling entertainer (might that be the meaning of the odd word they kept throwing at him?) and he'd been offered free beer and complimented for 'staying in character' – a couple cheerful barmaids had even winked and giggled at him promisingly, if from afar. It was a tad confusing, but it kept the ale coming, so…

Not everyone had been as enthusiastic, of course, but he wasn't bothered. A lot of mutterings about 'givin' a spectacle of himself' had followed him, a number of insults (some familiar, others less so, all slipping off him like rain off his coat) and it was never long before someone or other glared him out of the pub of the hour. But that was alright. He was quite used to having to move about from one drinking hole to the next of a night, lest unreasonable barkeeps started demanding to be paid in full, or unsavoury gentlemen in uniforms caught up with him.

There had been some confusion now and then (what kinda innkeeper didn't accept gold?) but he'd found out that being accused of being a 'cosplayer', even if he still didn't entirely understand what it meant, was convenient, as it gave him a lot of leeway from the more cheerful folk, who laughed at him a lot but were also lavish in their praise of his 'awesome costume' and 'great acting'. Definitely a word for a travelling entertainer, he'd concluded. Not a bad thing, all in all, no indeed.

He'd certainly been called worse.

His tales had been highly appreciated, too – apparently no-one knew how to properly recount a sea story anymore, more's the pity – and that was how he'd found himself telling a tall tale what had truthfully happened for certain (perhaps; he was reasonably sure; most of it anyway) to a group of wide-eyed youngsters in yet another pub – this one with a giant moving portrait of some sort of odd sports event in the nearby room, what was keeping most everybody's attention, except for his captive audience.

He'd actually been promised rum this time – from a less than pleasant barman, who'd glared at his clothes with a scowl sour enough to curd milk but had relented when presented with his pilfered suitable-in-the-future coins. Unfortunately, the so-called rum had turned out to be the most disgusting travesty of grog since that time Ol' Barnacle Waistcon tried ta use raphia instead o' proper sugarcane, the damn landlubber.

He'd told the barkeep as much, too – loudly. He was an accomodatin' fellow, he was, just ask anyone what he didn't owe money to and they'd tell ye, Captain Sparrow's very accomodatin'; but rum was important and good rum doubly so. Can't have folks goin' round sellin' the most awful dishwater an' call it rum, 'tisn't decent. Really, he'd just been doin' the sour man a favour, pointing out where he was goin' wrong! And he'd got thrown out for his troubles.

How rude.

He'd sniffed and adjusted his hat, and his dignity. Just what did one have ta do ta get some _real_ rum here in tha future, he'd wondered?

It was at that point that he'd remembered his precious compass. He'd taken it out and contemplated it thoughtfully.

Truth was – not a truth he particularly liked to admit, in fact, not a truth he admitted out loud _ever,_ but a truth nonetheless... truth was, he could never be sure it'd work for him. 'Twas always a fifty-fifty chance. And what kinda fool woulda tried a bet on those terms? Dice gave him much better odds, truly.

...What could he say? He was a complicated man. Knowing his own heart's desire wasn't as easy as some, like, say, Elizabeth, made it look.

However.

He really, really wanted some rum. And not the watered down version that rude innkeeper had tried to ply him with. No, he wanted the real deal, in fact, he wanted the best rum to be had in this strange world. He longed for it. He was desperate for it. Surely he wanted it strongly enough?

He'd snapped the compass open and grinned sharply when the point had stopped spinning after only a few moments.

He had followed it eagerly, (possibly too eagerly, according to the cacophony of hideous trumpets blaring at him from the horseless carriages and the insults and the yelling… constable? Aye, he was behaving like one, at any rate; the yelling constable what wanted to arrest him for 'obstructing the public highway' or some such nonsense, good thing escaping is a timeless art, and Captain Jack a true artist, as it were!) but now the accursed compass had led him to this unnerving hedgerow and was pointing straight at it.

Persistently.

Not budging no matter how he shook and tossed it.

It seemed to him, that a hedge might be a provider of rum should be very... unlikely. Unless it marked a secret stash? A smugglers' hideout, perhaps? There weren't no signs of such.

Yet the compass was very definite in its indication.

Sparrow observed the hedgerow, what observed him back. (Not an easy feat, without any eyes to be doing the observing with).

Abruptly, and quite unexpectedly, a gaping jaw split open among the small leaves.

The pirate jumped back in shock, his eyebrows rising until they disappeared under his hat.

A greyish hole, as dark as storm clouds, was swelling at the center of it, in a ghastly parody of a blooming flower.

Jack frowned as nothingness seemed to be regurgitated out of the gaping hole in oozy blasts. The ubiquitous glaring lights seemed dimmed around him all of a sudden, though it was probably just his focus centering on the strange happenings, and the whole hedgerow seemed now to be made of darkness, black branches twining like vines or serpents.

Then claws appeared and the pirate stumbled hastily further and further back; a hand, or a paw, was reaching out clutching at something, anything, for a hold, frantic, and finally, _something_ was spat out – something living – though what manner of creature it might be, Jack could not fathom.

It was about as big as a tall man, not too bulky, and sort of the right shape – arms and legs and whatnot, all in the usual places – but could certainly not be mistaken for a man, however ugly. Its grotesque mug was flattened, with deep wrinkles and barely any nose, its eye-sockets were carved deeply into its skull and it only had sparse hairs.

What caught one's eye the most, however, were the fang-like teeth: many, big and _sharp_. It looked like it could rip out one's throat with little effort and the pirate backed away with all due speed.

A creature of nightmares to be sure (and Jack could call it that with utter confidence, having some experience with such – meaning both nightmares and the creatures thereof).

The monster fell heavily to the ground, grunted, heaved, pushed itself halfway up and gave a weak howl. It was distressed, that much was clear, but it did not look any worse for wear. Odd. Whatever strange time inside the hedge it had lived through, it had, it seemed, left it unaffected, save for some disorientation. Very odd.

Sparrow studied it carefully, having prudently retreated behind some big and suitably smelling waste bins (truly a good idea, those) what kept him hidden from both its eyes and its (likely) sensitive nose. No reason to become a prey, should the creature be of a carnivorous nature, was there?

The monster didn't seem particularly aggressive however (or perhaps it was not hungry?): it picked itself up, shrugged the last of its confusion off, howled feebly again and sat back down on its hunches. Blocking Jack's escape route. The pirate grimaced and pouted a little. Inconvenient, that.

A honk blared in a nearby street and the creature started, howled once more, then ran as if hellhounds were on its tail. Away from Jack's hiding spot, what he appreciated (he perked right up), and straight towards the busy city, what might be worrisome. If one was inclined to worry for things beyond oneself, and all.

Then all was still.

The pirate slipped cautiously out of his hiding spot and stood, listening distractedly to distant screams; he didn't move, watching the empty alley for a good while, coming to terms with what he'd just seen. Then he turned to watch the hedgerow again.

The jaw was still open among the dark leaves, almost as if in a scream, or a yawn, but it teetered at the edges in such a way that seemed to indicate it would close quite soon.

A glance at his compass confirmed that the best rum to be had was still in the hedge. Or underneath it. Or perhaps… beyond it?

Jack Sparrow was many things and clever was most certainly one of them.

He contemplated the mawing, jaw-like hedgerow with a slight frown, evaluating what he knew, what he suspected, what he guessed and what he hoped. Coming to a decision, he nodded to himself and proceeded to secure his effects more tightly to his person. It was time to take a risk.

Taking a deep breath, he stepped forth and let the hedgerow eat him.

* * *

 

Not ten minutes later, three figures rounded the nearest corner at a run, grinning with triumph that quickly turned to frustration. 


	11. ...Of a Lifetime!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “There you are!” cried three voices at once.
> 
> “Am I?” asked Sparrow, sounding doubtful.

"I can't believe this!” shouted Sherlock, throwing his arms up in exasperation.

“No, no, wait. Wait just a minute, just… a… little… moment… yes! Look! My timey-wimey-piratey detector is working. He _was_ here, well done you, and he went into the hedge!”

“...Doctor, that makes no sense,” sighed John patiently.

But the Doctor was frowning at the innocent-looking plantrow. “Into the hedge...” he murmured thoughtfully. “Now why does this look familiar?”

“Doctor...”

“Really familiar. But why? It definitely reminds me of something… but what?”

“Doctor, would you listen!...”

The Time Lord went rigid.

“...Doctor?”

John was ignored; the Doctor was listening, yes, very intently in fact: to something else entirely.

A moment later, his eyes widened and he grabbed John and Sherlock by their shoulders. “Hide!” he hissed wildly, dragging them back and into the shadows.

“Wha…?”

“Shh!”

He pushed them behind some wastebins just in time, before two odd people rounded the corner, following a weird-looking hand-held contraption made of coloured cables, that beeped and tweeted apparently at random.

One was a pretty young woman with shoulder-length brown hair, wearing a short, beige coat and brown, knee-length boots; the other was a tall man with wide pale eyes bulging alarmingly above big teeth and a dark head of curly hair. He was fiddling with the million-or-so cables that seemed to make up his device, frowning thoughtfully.

“My old spatio-temporal gaps locator!” muttered the Doctor almost silently. “Oh. Oh! That's it! Cratenudbups. Originally from the three habitable systems of Futewhe. Now I remember! A scattered growth – very dangerous. Sarah-Jane and I had quite the task in shutting down all the subspatial tunnels they're inadvertently creating...”

“That… that's you?” asked John incredulously.

He watched the rather _bohémien_ man in the alley avidly, taking in the trench coat, unbottoned waistcoat and scruffy, slanted hat.

“Which you?” he asked in fascination.

“You're wearing question marks on the collar of your shirt,” commented Sherlock in a disapproving whisper.

“Hmm. I rather tended to do that, yes. More in later years, even.” The Doctor behind the wastebins paused contemplatively for a moment. “Can't remember why.”

“Doctor, are you sure it is working?” asked the woman worriedly from where the two had stopped in front of the hedgerow.

“Of course it works,” replied her companion loudly. “It's cutting edge technology! And depending on what this plantrow turns out to be, it might well become cutting _hedge_ , too...”

The pretty woman groaned. “I can't believe you just said that.”

“Whyever not?”

“What happened to your scarf?” John whispered as the two bantered, nudging the pinstripes-wearing Doctor with his shoulder.

“We're supposed to investigate an utterly abnormal and mysterious presence of subspatial tunnels – which _you_ noticed, I might add – and you make puns about it!” protested the woman emphatically just a few feet away.

The Doctor, peering at her from his hiding spot, nudged John back without looking at him: “Scarf? What scarf? I don't wear scarves. Death traps, one and all,” he proclaimed in a haughty murmur.

“Paronomasia is an excellent workout for the brain,” declared the hat-wearing Doctor loftily. “Now stand back, Sarah-Jane, wouldn't want this to grow out of hand… it's best to nip this one in the bud, so let's not beat around the bush.”

Sherlock groaned. The woman groaned as well. “Doctor, can't you take anything seriously?” she asked with fond exasperation.

“I'd make another one, but I'm trying to cut back,” replied the Doctor with a toothy grin.

Sarah-Jane groaned again.

Half of John was thoroughly enjoying the banter, but the other half frowned. “I liked that scarf,” he whispered to the Doctor by his side. “It had character.”

The displeased reply came in a hiss: “I told you, I don't--”

“There we go!” exclaimed the curly-haired Doctor enthusiastically from where he'd crouched close to the herdgerow, catching their attention again. “I say! We appear to have found ourselves some Cratenudbups!”

The Doctor with spiky hair was still muttering something about 'bets' and 'horrid' and 'Sarah-Jane's stupid picture', but John was distracted by his best friend.

“Cratenudbups. Cratenudbups,” repeated Sherlock in a reflexive murmur. “Hmm...” John spared him a glance and wondered if his friend was visiting his mind palace. He had that kind of lost-away look the doctor had learned to recognize.

The hat-wearing Doctor was now pointing something metallic and whirring (which John suspected was a sonic screwdriver) at the restless leaves, moving it slowly along a random pattern, all the while babbling to an interested Sarah-Jane about the alien hedge's 'intrinsic susceptibility to chemiluminescence' or some such.

Whatever he was doing, it was alighting traces of residual energy that almost looked like... a mouth. John grimaced, unnerved; Sherlock narrowed his eyes in interest. “Excitation of an analyte in the visible spectrum by a sonic stimulus. Quite ingenius,” he muttered – because of course he was following what the other Doctor was doing. John almost rolled his eyes. Bloody genius.

“Thank you, I thought so too,” murmured the Doctor in pinstripes absently. “Oh, yeah. Definitely Cratenudbups,” he whispered decidedly, moving some trash slightly to better peer at his younger self. “I hope I thought of moving them to some park or gardens. The best way to deal with them is to encourage them to grow into a hedge maze after all. They like that, keep each other entertained – plus, you get a nice garden maze to show off to all your friends. Win-win solution,” he explained to the two Londoners in a sage whisper.

“Wait. Hope? You don't remember what you did?” murmured Sherlock in a very unimpressed tone.

The curly-haired Doctor got up and stepped away from the hedge. “The best way to deal with them,” he proclaimed to Sarah-Jane with a winsome smile, “is to encourage them to grow into a hedge maze.”

“I just said that!” pouted the Doctor in hiding.

“Yes, yes, you did,” agreed John, stifling a laugh.

“Hedge maze?” was asking Sarah-Jane interestedly. “Do you mean, like the one at Hampton Court?”

“Oh, yes! It lets them keep each other entertained, you understand. Plus, it's pretty to look at, and occasionally fun.”

“I see.”

“Do you?” asked the Doctor with the hat in a tone of slight surprise.

“No.”

John stifled a small laugh. The Doctor by his side was beaming fondly. “Good old Sarah-Jane,” he murmured.

“Cratenudbups. I know _nothing_ of them,” interrupted Sherlock in a very irritated hiss. “Why do I know nothing of them? There was no mention of them in the website! Why weren't they covered?”

“Website? What website?” asked the spiky-haired Doctor distractedly.

“Oh, yeah!” exclaimed John quietly. “That reminds me: what the heck happened to the show?”

“What?”

“Because I seriously liked it!” muttered John a bit despondently.

The Doctor frowned in confusion, but was barely sparing any attention to his current companions. His younger self and Sarah-Jane were readying themselves to leave, the Time Lord having managed a few stopgap measures that his hidden counterpart was slowly remembering as they happened (something that always gave him a headache, but alas. Hazards of timetravel and all that.)

The Doctor in the alley had worked swiftly and efficiently, and though only the Doctor behind the wastebins truly understood what he'd been doing, even John could see that the energy outline of the mouth was reducing and the restless branches were stilling, until they were effectively frozen.

“Good. That'll keep things simple until the other me can get the Tardis here to move the Cratenudbups away,” muttered the older Doctor.

“That'll keep things nice and simple until I can come back and collect the Cratenudbups with the Tardis,” the Doctor assured Sarah-Jane with a toothy grin, shooing her away from the hedgerow.

“The more things change...” murmured John, inordinately amused.

“It is really very inconvenient that that website disappeared,” complained Sherlock with some annoyance. “Even though it appears that it was woefully incomplete. But then, most archives are.”

“What?” The Time Lord's focus was yanked back to a conversation he abruptly realized he should probably have paid attention to. “What do you mean, a website disappeared? Which website? And what show?” he yelped quietly, suddenly concerned.

They could hear Sarah-Jane's worried voice inquiring about the logistics of moving the plantrow and the younger Doctor insisting that she “stop dawdling, I must close these spatial tunnels at once or by morning we might all be dead!”

The pinstripes-wearing Doctor just stared at the consulting detective. “What are you talking about?”

* * *

Some 150 miles to the west of that alley, Jack Sparrow was observing the frantic, lights-filled world around him pensively.

Being eaten by the hedgerow had been unpleasant, all swirling rushing lights and nausea-inducing spinning; but it wasn't the first unpleasant task he'd faced in his long life and it wouldn't be the last, and he had learned to shrug this kind of things off as soon as he could wipe his hat clean of spit and gore.

He studied instead the twilight scene before him.

He was obviously in a city: there were far too many edifices around to be anything else. He could see the sea in the gaps between buildings, though, pink and purple in a perfect reflection of the starless sky above, and it made him feel better.

Judging by the weather and the light, and what he could see of the horseless carriages and clothes going about, he guessed he hadn't moved too far away from the London he was in earlier, though he couldn't be sure, of course.

He'd landed in a harbour, too, he realized quickly, relaxing further. There weren't many boats, and no ships at all in the docks, but he could tell: it might look nothing like a harbour, but as strange as the ropes and machineries he could spot were, not to mention the lack of barrels, sacks and wooden crates, there was nevertheless that general sense of a wharf at the end of a busy workday, that any sailor could recognize. After all, no matter what odd contraptions might be used to load and unload instead of cubersome, tiring manwork, cargo was still cargo; and there were the expected pallets, and huge metal boxes what no man coulda moved, but perhaps the machineries were ta help wi' that. Mayhap, he reflected while studying what he could see, break-bulk shipping wasn't as hard in the future as he was used to – a pleasant thought indeed.

He felt even better when he realized, just watching the darkening area for a while and spotting a couple instances of violence, not to mention neatly avoiding an attempted theft from his person, that future slums were still slums. It was quite easy to hide, and easy to judge the few others what were hiding too. He felt quite at home.

Now. Hadn't he been promised rum? He eyed his compass balefully.

The sudden disappearance of the unnerving sensation at his back surprised him for all of a moment. He'd barely registered the prickling feeling, since he knew it came from the hedgerow what had spat him out, but now that it was gone, it was suddenly noticeable.

He left his hiding spot and turned to study the plantrow with a frown. The leaves were still; the swirling greyish nothingness had vanished. The passage was closed.

Oh, well.

Another quick glance at his (most of the time) trusty compass assured him that rum was on this side of it, and so was Jack himself, therefore everything was well.

With a cheerful spring in his swaying gait, he set off to find it.

* * *

Meanwhile, in London, the Doctor was leading Sarah-Jane away rapidly and also, of course, hiding behind smelly wastebins and discussing time mechanics and paradoxes and other matters of astronomical import in hurried whispers.

“What website are you talking about?”

“The Tardis Data Core, it... vanished. Gone without a trace. As if it never existed. Just like the show,” continued to explain John, slowly slipping out from behind the wastebins, while keeping a wary eye out for returning Time Lords, or pirates, or aliens of whatever kind.

“John! _Which_ show?”

The blogger turned to the Doctor, who was stumbling out into the alley as well: “Remember that TV show I told you about? That was all about… well, you?”

“Aaah, yes!... About that...” started the Doctor looking smug and sheepish all at once.

“It doesn't exist anymore!” blurted out John. “Nobody remembers a thing about it! I asked… I checked the internet, libraries, even old second-hand shops... nothing! I was at the pub and made a joke on it and nobody got it, nobody could remember watching it at all, or even hearing it mentioned!...”

The Doctor smiled blithely and interrupted his tirade: “Yes, well, I went and... corrected that little mistake.”

Sherlock emerged as well, adjusting the collar of his coat and somehow looking perfectly put together. “Correct?” he demanded sharply. “As in…?”

“We-elll! I really had no other choice. A TV show about my life? Do you have an idea how dangerous that would be? Very, _very_ dangerous, let me tell you. What if I'd seen an episode and found out something about my own future? What if someone else had reacted like you? What if it all turned into a bubbling temporal paradox? And reapers were drawn out in force by a disruption of the balance of time? You don't want winged dragon-like beings with red eyes, mouths on their chests, claws that could break through stone and scythes for tails to swoop down on you and _excise_ the paradox, believe you me!”

All through his rant, the Doctor was running his sonic screwdriver up and down the frozen hedgerow, trying not to disrupt his younger self's work while still figuring out where his wayward, rum-loving companion might have disappeared to. He rather feared the question was more literal than he would like, too.

“Far, far too dangerous!” he babbled on, hardly knowing what he was saying. “Now, I like dangerous as much as the next bloke, nothing like some good honest adrenaline to make a day worth living...”

His younger self's actions had destroyed most of the temporal traces around the Cratenudbups, but the Doctor could still tell that a timetraveller other than him or Sarah-Jane had been there not long before. And his temporal signature vanished into the Cratenudbups. Had the foolish pirate been caught into the spatio-temporal tunnel, perchance?

“...but there are some things that are simply best left alone. Jymmying the timelines is one of those things!” he concluded, stifling the urge to curse. With the tunnel shut down by his younger self, finding where Sparrow had ended up would be nigh impossible!

John frowned, trying to sort out what the Doctor was really saying amidst all the words he was firing out. “So you... what? Prevented the show from being filmed? How?”

The Doctor whirled about, focusing back onto the blond blogger: “Exactly! I had a chat with my future companion and convinced him that there are better ways to employ his time. Apparently some idiot on a plane had told him to write it all down and sell it as a sci-fi script to make some money. And he'd done just that, in the hope of funding his own personal research into time-travel. Only he decided that he didn't want to wait and used one little piece of technology that he'd kept as a souvenir! Which unfortunately turned out to be a time vortex, of all things. I still can't believe I'll let him keep it – except that, well, I won't have a choice, will I? Since I've seen I will.” He sniffed. “Oh, luckily he didn't have much charge to it – no compatible chargers before the 42nd century, you see – but it was enough for one trip there and back again, so he went, sold the idea to that Newman bloke, set up a bank account which accruited interest until now and... well. I was able to convince Newman that the show would never take flight and to invest in Star Trek instead – much safer. Also, I like Star Trek,” he added thoughfully. “I still can't believe I invited along such an idiot! My next incarnation must be a rather untrustworthy bloke.”

“...”

“Wow.”

The Time Lord glared tiredly: “No. No, really. No.”

“Right. Sorry.” John tried to pretend contrition.

The Doctor rolled his eyes. “Anyway, now it's all fixed. The world is being rewritten around the absence of that show and I've created a new circuit for the Tardis to prevent any of my companions from writing down our shared adventures.”

“You did what?” asked Sherlock, aghast.

“Much safer for everyone involved. And also for everyone not involved, come to it,” rambled on the Doctor. “As for him, I sent him UNIT's way – they'll keep him occupied. Last thing I need is someone inventing the Time Agency too early...”

“So that's why I can't write anything down?” interjected John, trying to keep the accusation from his tone. “Whenever I try to type something about you, the document erases itself in seconds.”

“I know.”

“...So I won't be able to blog about this?”

“Sorry.”

John glared.

“It's nothing personal. Really, I love your blog! Never miss an update!”

“Well, it is very inconvenient,” was Sherlock's petulant comment.

“Inconv--?” The Doctor stared at the consulting detective, incredulous.

“You don't even read my blog, Sherlock!” complained John good-naturedly.

Sherlock waved his hand impatiently: “Of course I do – in any case, I was talking about the website, which, as you might have noticed were you not so self-centred, was our only reference source on alien species.”

John goggled: “ _I'm_ self-centred?”

“Of course, it matters little. After our joint adventure, Doctor, I watched every episode, listened to every audio file, read every tale about you I could find – and there were a lot at first. Now they're all gone – all of them – but they're also stored safely in a wing of my mind palace.”

“Don't tell me anything!” shouted the Doctor.

Sherlock gave him a considering look: “The dangers of tangling timelines,” he nodded. “I read up on that, too.”

And he swirled away.

“Read up… why, the nerve! Didn't I just explain all that? What does he need to _read_ about it for?” pouted the Doctor.

John ignored both with practiced ease. “But I remember, too,” he said instead. “Doctor, I remember everything...!”

“Ah, yes... well... that's... that's kind of, ah, my fault. Sort of. Residual memory born of the synergy between the Tardis' temporal grace state and the rewrenching of un-tuned event strings into a stabilized timeline,” he rattled off, as if John could understand what the heck he was saying. “But you did say you find the 21st century enjoyable?” he asked with very wide, very brown puppy-eyes.

“Ah,” deadpanned John. “ _That_.”

Before the army doctor turned blogger could decide if he should revisit his earlier anger at the upturning of his perception of himself and his life, Sherlock's phone rang.

When the detective ignored it, John's started ringing instead.

“Hello?… Lestr--! What? The same? Right. Where… Balham? Really? Yeah, yeah, of course-- we're just… err… Look, we'll be there, ok?”

He snapped it shut and opened his mouth. Sherlock beat him to the punch: “There's been another one,” he stated, frowning.

“Balham, though,” commented John, sounding slighlty perturbed. “That's strange.”

“What's strange with Balham?” asked the Doctor curiously. “Wait, wait, I've got a better question. Another what?”

“Another mysterious death. Possibly a murder,” explained Sherlock succinctly. He rewove his blue scarf around his neck and started towards the nearest chance at a cab.

“Possibly?” The Doctor's eyebrows rose. “And-- Balham?” he asked, turning to John. “Balham isn't strange.”

The blond man thought for a moment, then replied: “You know Clapham?”

“Of course I know Clapham!” blustered the Doctor. “I knew Clapham before it was Clapham! I took tea with Elizabeth Cook in Clapham!”

“Yes, well, nowadays, as my esteemed colleagues would say, it's Nappy Valley. Assuming you are an an investment banker or similarly paid. Or married to one. And Balham is just one stop on the tube from Clapham. Basically the same, only the cheaper version. It's not that it's strange, per se, it's just… not where I would expect a gruesome murder.”

“Assumptions are ridiculous, John,” came Sherlock's haughty voice from a bit further. “The great majority of murderers aren't epically clever villains with great plans, but harassed clerks who just couldn't take their boss' bullying anymore and battered wives that simply snapped and took a baseball bat to their worthless husbands.”

“Right, right...”

“And yes, Doctor. _Possibly_. There is no solid evidence that they are, indeed, murders. The wounds so far have been consistent with animal attacks rather than human hands. Still, it is quite possible that a human is using an animal for his own murderous purposes.”

“They? So far?” The Doctor sounded positively bewildered.

Sherlock sighed like a long-suffering parent. (Which John always found unfair, given how much of a child he was).

“It's a cold case,” explained John hurriedly. “Cases, rather. The first we heard of happened almost four months ago, then nothing, so we thought it was a one-off, right? But then a very similar one happened, and another… we weren't sure what to think...”

Sherlock sniffed: “Speak for youself. I have several viable hypotheses.”

He materialized a cab in his usual inexplicable way and soon they were on their way; John went on explaining: “Then it happened again, just a few days later; but even Sherlock couldn't piece things together.”

He ignored Sherlock's grumbling, and so did the Doctor, who was frowning in thought.

“And once more, there was nothing after the attack… until now...” concluded John.

“Several disappearances are connected to the potential murders as well,” interjected Sherlock darkly. “Not that anyone believes me.”

“Whyever not?” asked the Doctor, sounding offended on his behalf.

“Homeless, vagrants, vagabonds, they go missing all the time, don't they?” said Sherlock with slighly bitter rhetoric.

“Thankfully the mauled bodies convinced Lestrade to investigate all avenues – and he knows Sherlock enough not to discount his advice,” said John.

The crime scene wasn't much different from the dozens of others John had seen since meeting Sherlock. Policemen milling about, barricade tape helding back gawkers, forensic scientists busy collecting, tagging, logging and packaging as much evidence as they could in the shortest possible time.

A number of flashes went off as pictures were taken to document everything of potential interest; evidence markers dotted the place – John knew enough to realize just how far the victim was spread and winced – and Sherlock was quickly working his way through examining the scene, heedless of the grumblings and insults that rained on him from all sides – the only difference being that this time he had a tall, thin alien dogging his steps.

Donovan was keeping track of all the comings and goings, directing people with an efficiency that belied her too-often lacking professionalism (as usual); she seemed a bit thrown by the Doctor's presence, though (“Freak! Who the hell is this?!”), and put off by his open enthusiasm for Sherlock's methods (“Someone tell me what is going on!”). Not to mention the way he _touched_ everything ( “Hold on, you're contaminating a crime scene!”) , and once even _licked_ some evidence (“Tell me why I shouldn't arrest you all!”).

And Lestrade was marching up to them in long, stalking steps.

He opened his mouth (probably to berate them) but Sherlock didn't give him the time to say a word. “Whatever did this had very sharp fangs. Biped, though. Not much shorter than an average human. Heavier, but not overly so. Definitely faster than even an athlete. Exactly like the previous times.”

John's usual “Amazing!” was, to Sherlock's surprise, echoed by the Doctor's “Fantastic!”

Lestrade did a double take.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked loudly. “What do you think you're doing? Wait. Stop! You can't go in there-- What are you even-- you-- Sherlock! Who the hell is this!? I can't just let anyone onto a crime scene...”

Lestrade was, as usual, overruled by the whirlwind that was his sort-of friend. Strangely, John, too, pretended to ignore the irregularity, not even muttering an embarrassed apology for his partner (most unusual) and that left Lestrade somewhat reeling.

(Truth was, John didn't have any idea how to justify the Doctor, so he figured pretending to ignore the problem was his best bet.)

“Oh. Oh, no. Oh, this is bad.” The Doctor crouched over some gory remains, sniffing them. “Oh, this is very, very bad.”

“Doctor?” asked John carefully, leaning over him.

Sherlock was eagerly focused: “You know what did this!” he exclaimed rather than asking.

Lestrade's feeble protests were ignored.

“Ever heard of the sewer crocodiles in New York City? 1930s or thereof?” asked the Time Lord, looking up at the three men.

“Yeah?” asked John, breathless.

“Not crocodiles,” said the Doctor succinctly.

“What? Are you serious?” Lestrade yelped, staring, while Donovan muttered something highly uncomplimentary in the background.

“That was just an urban legend!” protested Sherlock, crouching by the Doctor with a gleam in his eyes that John knew all too well.

“Legends always hold a nugget of truth.”

“You're saying that there are alien crocodiles in our sewers?” asked John, trying not to sound too skeptical.

“Not crocodiles,” repeated the Doctor impatiently.

“Aliens, Christ. You've brought us a wierdo.” Donovan snorted. “Shouldn't be surprised I guess.”

“Is he for real?” Lestrade asked the universe at large.

“Well, whatever they are, they're attacking my Network.” Sherlock sounded totally put upon.

He straightened up and Lestrade grabbed his arm quite firmly. “Sherlock,” he said with forced calm. “Who. Is. This. Weirdo?”

The Doctor got up too and went on as if he was oblivious to the incredulity and irritation surrounding him, staring thoughtfully at the blood and gore. “The problem is that they aren't an inherently violent race, mostly they only attack if threatened directly.”

“These seem to have gone rogue,” John deadpanned.

“Indeed,” agreed Sherlock thoughtfully, ignoring how Lestrade was tightening the grip on his arm to the point of pain. “The position of the body and the pattern of traces indicate the victim was attacked from behind and taken down efficiently. Nothing suggests a cornered beast lashing out in a panic. This is the behaviour of a hunter.” He raised his gaze to the Doctor briefly: “Your pirate will have to wait.”

“Pirate? _What_ pirate?!” Lestrade's voice was past frustration.

The Doctor winced and turned to the detective earnestly: “Look, I'm really very sorry. I didn't mean to take him this far into the future, really.”

“No, I don't mean-- I... what?!?”

“But he doesn't seem to have done too much damage anyway. So… all's well?”

Lestrade gaped.

* * *

Said pirate was, at that very moment, savouring his long-sought treasure – a bottle of _very_ fine rum, very fine indeed – in a dreadfully dull warehouse, some 200km to the west of the investigating trio.

Completely unaware that he was about to utterly throw a certain small team of alien hunters (converging on him at the very moment) for a loop, despite their being far too used to the odd, weird, alien, anomalous, bizarre, uncanny and generally strange.

* * *

Captain Jack Harkness was having a bad day.

A day full of rain and mud and too-primitive-technology and too-much-running and too-many-problems. Not all too unusual an occurrence, in this life he'd made for himself while waiting for, as he might say if anyone asked, “the right kind of Doctor”; but still unpleasant.

There was mud on his fantastic coat and a string of terse directions in his ear, courtesy of a rather stressed technical expert by the name of Toshiko Sato. And he was chasing a Weevil in the streets of Cardiff. _Again_. Curse the stars, it was the fifth this week! What had gotten into them?

Tosh's voice in his earpiece directed him through the very familiar maze of alleys, relying on her software to keep track of their prey.

Unknowing that the very Time Lord he so desperately wished to catch up with was only about one hour away, as a short-haul aircraft flies, he took a turn at a dead run, caught a glimpse of their target and yelled at his team to “hurry the bloody hell up!”

As if in response, the pounding of the rain picked up.

Suddenly, Tosh gave a cry of surprise. “It's gone! I can't find it anywhere on the map!”

Frantic clicking could be heard in the background, as she tried to compensate for a possible malfunction, though knowing their luck, it was nothing as simple as that.

Harkness cursed out loud. Could this week get any worse? Nobody answer that, please.

He looked around to organize his team, only to find that Gwen Cooper had lagged behind and was on the phone, her longish brown hair plastered to her face by the unrelenting rain.

Ready to curse again, he was stopped by the look on her face when she snapped the cell phone closed and started yelling: “They found another stash!”

Just. Bloody. Great.

They'd been finding these 'stashes' for the past month or so, or rather, the local law enforcement had been finding them. Torchwood never seemed to know about these caches in time to get there first – and they could not figure out why.

Mostly it was weapons; some art pieces, a lot of technology components but not much of immediate use, now and then luxury foodstuff.

All of it undoubtedly alien.

And at least two kinds of precious metals non-native to Earth, in tidy piles of ingots, as if the rest wasn't bad enough. One of which was highly toxic to humans upon skin contact.

When he caught the cursed morons that were smuggling besserium (and a host of other things) onto _his_ planet…

(And Earth _was_ his _._ He'd been defending it for over a century. It counted.)

The only saving grace was that there was nothing sentient being smuggled. Nevertheless, the team had been working their arses off to stop this – having to retcon the police so often was a bit much even for Torchwood standards – yet weren't able to catch whoever was responsible. Harkness was starting to suspect they had a way to block Torchwood's monitoring systems, because it just wasn't realistic that the bloody Cardiff cops, who didn't even know what they were looking for, could find these assholes more easily than his highly trained team!

He was at the point where he was starting to consider _not_ retconning the police anymore, letting them have a go at cracking the case in its entirety, since they were obviously in a better position to do so. The paperwork would be a nightmare, but… Sadly, he knew that the local law enforcement wasn't equipped to cope with such definitely not local smugglers. Whoever they were, they had access to transmat technology at the very least!

In any case, if there was a chance to get the bastards at last, chasing a weevil had to slip down the priority list. Especially chasing a weevil that was nowhere on their radar.

“No trace of the weevil in a fifty miles radius. At all,” confirmed Tosh in his earpiece, grim and bewildered. “I just don't understand!”

Harkness sighed, closing his eyes for a long moment. Then he clapped his hands: “Alright, kids! Change of plans...”

* * *

Halfway to the indicated warehouse, they got a grim update: there were smugglers at the site still – cops were hysterical, which probably meant they were visibly alien – the intercepted ramblings about red skin were also indicative – and things had escalated to a shooting – two policemen were dead and several more had been injured.

“We're going to have to dose the water supply again, aren't we?” asked Owen in a resigned tone.

Gwen looked at him oddly: “Didn't you say the water company got really pissed off the last time we did that?”

Tosh's voice interrupted their banter with an underlying urgengy: “Jack, the police radio reports I've hacked say it's the red warehouse to your left,” she said unnecessarily – they could see quite clearly the ambulances, police cars and dozens of people swarming the site; what a nightmare – but then went on to add: “but I'm picking up a lifesign in the pale yellow one with the barbed wire. Human, but with some weird radiation readings.”

“I see it, Tosh. We'll check that out first.”

Guns out, they burst into the warehouse that might (had they been lucky) have held their targets and stumbed to a stop in shock.

There was a pirate sitting on an overturned crate in a corner.

An actual, honest-to-God pirate. Complete with flintlock pistol, ornate pistol belts, a ragbag of sea-weathered garb (Harkness noted the coat with fleeting admiration), and a faded-black tricorne hat.

In Cardiff.

“Holy shit,” Doctor Owen Harper summed up effectively.

“Ah! Company!” the unexpected man said grandly, getting himself to his feet unsteadily and swaying gently, like a weather wane in the wind.

Jack Harkness was quite the good judge of anachronisms – the Time Agency was big on that kind of thing – and he was fairly sure the man was the real deal. Spat out by the rift, most likely; though he seemed to be taking it a lot better than the average unfortunate.

“Who are you?” demanded Gwen sternly, her gun steady in her usual one-handed grip. She got a vague smile in reply.

His sense of smell being quite sophisticated, Harkness had little trouble guessing the probable reason for the man's unsteadiness. The rum smelled like good quality, though, he'd give the pirate that much.

The out-of-time man swayed lightly, peering at the glowering woman: “My tremenduous intuitive sense of the female creature informs me that you strongly dislike me – do I owe you money, by chance?”

Unwittingly amused, Harkness admitted to himself that the misplaced pirate certainly had style. Out loud, he reiterated the question: “Who are you?”

“Me? I'm Captain Jack Sparrow!”

From behind Harkness, Owen groaned audibly. “Great. Just what we needed. Two Captain Jacks!”

“Twice the fun!” commented Harkness promptly. His team glared at him, but really, did they expect him to let such an opening pass him by?

The pirate was sliding away from him with a frozen look: "I'm deeply flattered, lad, but my one and only love is the sea."

Harkness pouted.

Owen moved forward, familiar annoyance on his thin, pointed face; sheating his gun, he asked rudely: “What the hell are you doing here?”

Sparrow graced them all with a glinting smile: “Enjoying the illicit fruits of a time-honoured and enterprising profession,” he proclaimed grandly.

Oh, yeah. Harkness grinned. The man had _style_.

“Smuggling.” Sparrow explained to the doctor's uncomprehending look, and showed off his prized bottle.

“Time-honoured?!” burst out Gwen, indignant – all her former policewoman's sensibilities offended by the pirate's claim. “Profession!?”

“Why, love. Smuggling is good!” he protested. “It takes enterprise, stealth, original thinking. All good traits!”

“It's illegal!” she yelled, her Welsh accent stretching the vowels with her ire.

Sparrow's courteous smile conveyed very effectively that he didn't give a damn. Harkness stifled a laugh.

Gwen's features hardened. “Are you behind all this, then?” she demanded harshly. “Did you kill those people?”

Sparrow's eyebrows rose in shock, but then he smirked: “I doubt it. I prefer not to use brute force if possible. All that blood and… stuff. Not my style. Trickery is smarter and works better.”

“You're just a coward,” accused Owen with a snort, but he looked amused.

“Damn right I am,” replied the pirate proudly. “I ain't no foolish hero what throws his life away for some grand, meaningless ideal. Me, I'll take intelligent cowardice over foolhardy bravery any day.”

He shot Gwen a mocking look at this and she bristled; she firmed her jaw, gun still ostentatiously trained on the man, and Harkness moved to calm her dow - the last thing he needed was her shooting the poor sod centuries after he'd been born - putting his own gun away without qualms. He briefly wondered why he felt so at ease with their unexpected guest, but he'd come to trust his instincts and they were telling him the man was all right. At any rate, he was fairly sure this pirate had nothing to do with the smugglers they were after.

Captain Sparrow took a swig from his hard-earned bottle and then, rolling his eyes at Gwen's scowl, he condescendingly assured: “They were already dead when I arrived.”

“What?”

“The men what got shot out there.” Sparrow gestured with his bottle. “They were down for the count, an' people what look like soldiers were yellin', and short red people wi' spikes all over were yellin' and shootin', and then they got hit by pink lighnin', what must not have been much fun I don't think, an' poof! Gone. Same for the two what was here. Pink lightning and whoosh! Not at all like how I arrived,” he finished reflexively.

Captain Harkness' mind worked hastily to make sense of the somewhat confused, but unexpectedly thorough explanation. Sounded like Zocci to him, having a showdown with the cops, and a transmat beam – he'd been right about that – but what did the man mean by…?

“...Arrived,” he repeated out loud, and gestured for him to elaborate: “Arrived how?” He had his suspicions about the pirate's presence, but best to be sure.

Sparrow made a vague hand-motion. “The world spun ghostly and colorless!” he raved, stumbling forward with remarkable grace, as if he was treading the boards of an Elizabethan stage. “White. Silver. Black. Grey...” he lowered his voice to a mysterious whisper. “ 'Twas all...” he moved his hands in a meaningful way that told them absolutely nothing. “And then…” he gestured again leaning back, wide-eyed, and nodded seriously.

The odd thing was, Harkness reflected in bafflement, that they were all hanging on his every word. Gesture. Whatever.

“Unpleasant,” concluded the pirate with an air of finality, and returned his attention to the rum.

Harkness frowned. Grey? The Rift wasn't grey. Rift energy tended to have a bluish tinge to it, but mostly, it was just eye-watering light, at the very edge of the visible spectrum. The only thing that would be perceived as swirling and ghost-like greyness was...

“A spatio-temporal tunnel!” he exclaimed with surprise. Studying the man more closely, he spied a few things that raised alarm bells – those gold bands looked definitely Pastafarians, for one; and was that glowing piece of bark Alumian? Perhaps he'd misjudged the situation--

He moved casually closer to the pirate until he could swiftly snatch the bottle away (“Hey! That's me rum!”) and sniffed at the bottle.

“Syntharum,” he commented, surprised and not at once. “Not bad. Not as good as hypervodka, of course, but not bad at all. Also, not to be invented for quite a few centuries.”

“And not on this here planet, yes, I know,” said Sparrow, still pouting.

Harkness narrowed his eyes. “You do look like someone from Sevenseas,” he commented thoughtfully, with fake nonchalance. “The hat and all.”

“Very important things, hats,” assured Sparrow and grabbed the bottle back.

Well, that changed things.

“He's an alien?” asked Gwen incredulously.

“Everybody's an alien somewhere, love,” retorted the pirate before Harkness could say anything.

Owen snorted.

“Okay, well.” Harkness clapped his hands to try and regain some control of the situation. “We can help you make your way back. Hopefully. Maybe. Or else convince someone to cast you in a movie so you'll be set here. But in the meanwhile, we'll have to lock you up. Just to ensure you're not a threat, you understand,” he told the Sevenseaser.

“I ain't no threat!” protested Sparrow. “Honestly. I am peculiarly disinclined to harm those what are not peculiarly inclined to harm _me_ , savvy?”

“Excellent philosophy. Stick with it and we'll be fine.”

* * *

Meanwhile in London, Sherlock had somehow shaken off a very bewildered Lestrade and rattled off to the Doctor all the observations he'd compiled on the previous crime scenes, giving the descriptions of the marks of a creature's passage in the alleys and the bloody and torn pieces of human bodies with the same clinical detachment with which they were received.

The two were now throwing theories back and forth, heads bent together, talking over each other at high speed; John rather suspected some of the wilder things they were saying were more to keep the stimulating discussion going than actual hypotheses.

He kept an ear on their spirited discussion (filing away the _useful_ tidbits, like the fact that the creatures were definitely faster – and likely stronger – than a man, that they typically lived in dark, damp conditions, that group behaviour and territorial aggression had been observed, that loud noises scared them; all things that would come in handy should they have to fight them) and an eye out for anything potentially threatening (be it murderous aliens or annoying police investigators; someone had to be on the lookout while the geniuses got lost in their minds, after all).

While he waited, he reflected on the evident changes in the Doctor's behaviour, as well as looks. This new version no longer moved with his predecessor's combination of blunt strength and boneless grace that was both arresting and disconcerting; rather, he darted hither and yon, rambled on conversationally (regardless of having an audience or not) and tended to stuff his hands in his pockets more than to cross his arms before his chest.

He was still as manic and brilliant as ever, though.

“That's it! Oh, oh! That explains it!” he yelled at last, leaning away from Sherlock just to have a chance to point his finger at the consulting detective. “Well done you! Low-level telepathic field! That's what I was missing!”

He rocked on the balls of his feet, looking genuinely pleased. “They don't have a language as we intend it, see, in fact, a lot of species categorize them as being of low-level intelligence, but it's just because they think on a different wavelength! They communicate through the group, not mind-to-mind, but rather mind-to-a-collective-mind, sort of. Isn't it brilliant? But the spatio-temporal tunnels, they play havoc on a telepathic mind! I should know, whenever I accidentally end up in one, I get out with a splitting headache, my magnetic perception all over the place and a craving for strawberries. I don't even like strawberries,” he rambled on plaintively. “I don't imagine they do, either. I think we can safely assume their aggressive behaviour is a consequence of a very unpleasant trip!”

“So… they're killing people because they have a headache?” summed up John with a slight frown.

“One hell of a headache,” agreed the Doctor. “We-elll… there is the slight possibility that they might see it as killing _food_ because they have a headache, of course. But!”

“You believe that they are being brought here by the Cratenudbups, then?” interjected Sherlock.

“Not on purpose!” said the Doctor quickly, waving his hands in the air. “It's just that I can detect absolutely nothing else that could have brought them here. No space-time rifts running through the city, no holes in the continuum, no energy sources from any kind of non-terrestrial technology in any close range...”

“Therefore, the only reasonable explanation is that they've been coming through the spatio-temporal tunnels created by the Cratenudbups,” concluded Sherlock, nodding along. His eyes narrowed: “The pirate in the hedge,” he murmured (and John made a mental note to use that as a title before he remembered he would not be able to blog about any of this). “Could the disappearances be the same thing in reverse?”

“Why, certainly! The tunnels go both ways – and come to think of it, you're right. My pirate clearly did just that. Which is a problem in and of itself.” The Time Lord frowned, losing his excitement.

“Why?” asked John practically. “Can't you go and get him wherever he's ended up?”

“No, I can't. Why? Because I don't know where he's ended up!” said the Doctor. He ran a hand through his hair, obviously frustrated.

“Surely you can find him?” asked John incredulously.

“If I could, I would have already,” snapped the Time Lord.

“But why…?”

“Because I shut the tunnel down!” He ran a hand through his hair again. “The younger me, that is. Completely understandable, of course, how was I to know I would need it open? Also annoying.”

He paced and ranted: “All I know is that he can't have gone further than 200 miles in any direction, those Cratenudbups were too young to manage more than that. That's about 120 thousand square miles I should comb with my timey-wimey-piratey detector, land and sea – it'll take ages! He could be anywhere from Nottingham to-- to Dieppe!”

Sherlock sighed deeply, quite put upon. “We might have to ask Mycroft,” he said with obvious distaste.

The Doctor curled his lips. “I don't like your brother,” he protested. “Stuck on that ridiculous idea that I'm an enemy of the state. Why, I have no idea. It's not like I've ever done anything to warrant such hostility…”

Sherlock goggled. “You know my brother? What am I saying, you're an alien freelance defender of the British Empire. Of course you know my brother.”

“Of the Earth,” corrected the Doctor with a frown.

“In Mycroft's head, that's the same.”

* * *

The Torchwood team was having marginally more success with tracking _their_ quarries.

“If they're Zocci, that'd explain the technology level,” Harkness related hurriedly to a frowning Gwen and an absent but intent Tosh, “and how they're getting their hands on all this stuff. A lot of them come from planets that are big in the recreational business – pleasure cruises and the like. Ideal for smuggling. But how are they escaping our notice?”

“I can't track them,” came Tosh's voice. “I can't even see them. Even knowing where and approximately when they've been, I can barely detect any trace of their passage. It's like their presence on Earth is cloaked in some way that is specifically targeted to our detectors. All I notice is Rift activity, everything they do is hidden beneath a blanket of data on temporal fluctuations and standard energy readings.”

“Maybe it's something they're putting around the crates? A shield or-- or a concealing wavelength or... something?” tried Gwen, who didn't have much of a clue when it came to technology, but generally grasped the workings of a criminal mind better than any of them.

“Like a beacon that generates a white noise?” asked Tosh, sounding intrigued. “I suppose it's possible. If it produced a continuum of frequencies evenly distributed over the Rift's usual range... It wouldn't have to be bigger than a microchip, either… probably stuck to the goods somewhere.”

“Good idea. Let's have a look at the loot,” nodded Harkness.

“… and then she sailed away in the dinghy,” was saying Sparrow from the upturned crate he'd reclaimed as his seat, moving his hand theatrically to underline his words.

Harkness did a double take when he saw that Owen was sitting next to him, chin propped on one hand, absolutely riveted by the tale. “Must have been one hell of a kiss,” the doctor commented with feeling. Sparrow smiled smugly.

“If we could get back to work,” hissed Gwen pointedly, marching up to Owen with a glare. The doctor jumped up, looking guilty, then hunched his shoulders and started glaring back.

Harkness ignored them all and went to sort through the crates. Ammo, ammo, small sculptures nestled in silk, more ammo… chocolate bars, huh, that was new…

In the background, Gwen and Owen were bickering (“Don't these people know how to pack?” - “Careful there! Leave that alone, what are you even doing?” - “Aargh! Goddammit!” - “God, Owen, don't try to activate alien tech, it's like the first thing you learn in this job!” - “Well, excuse me if I don't know what this is at a glance!...” - “You have a scanner, don't you? Maybe you could, I don't know, use it?” - “What for? There's nothing here!” - “Gimmie that!” - “Get your own!”).

Harkness pretended he couldn't hear them. Another crate of chocolate… berillium batteries? Those were only produced for a brief period in the Post-Garren Age!…

“I've seen this before,” declared Sparrow unexpectedly. “In a Spanish convent.”

He was frowning in contemplation over a statue that he'd lifted out of a silk wrapping. It was a Santiago Matamoros, some sixteen inches high, mostly wooden; Saint James was riding a muscular horse, wrapped in a cloak that fanned out behind him, with a sword raised high above his head, while frightened looking Moors lay sprawled under him. From what little Harkness knew of the matter, it looked fairly standard.

“What were you doing in a Spanish convent, anyway?” grumbled Owen, who was feeling irritable because of the stinging pain in the hand he was traying to wrap (having carelessly burned himself on an anchoring rod for cyborg implants, if Harkness was any judge).

The pirate shrugged: “Mistook it for a brothel. Honest mistake!”

Gwen looked up incredulously from the bunch of munitions strings for some sort of energy rifle that she was trying without much success to disentangle.

Harkness pushed himself away from a crate of gears and nodded thoughtfully: “That actually happened to me as well, once. Well, not in Spain – on Hyacinth III, but still. Perfectly understandable mistake.”

Sparrow nodded earnestly.

Owen facepalmed.

Harkness grinned and made his way to the statue that Sparrow had put down again. “You say you saw something like this once?”

Sparrow looked at him gravely: “No, mate, I didna see somethin' like this, I saw _this_. See this here marks?” He pointed to the unmistakable signs of something having been wrenched away from Saint James' cloak and smiled brightly. “I did that!” His face fell: “An' then I got caught.” He looked at nothing, thoughts far away. “Had to impersonate a parson to get out of that one. He he.”

Gwen wondered idly: “How did an alien artefact end up in a Spanish convent?”

“I don't think it's alien,” Harkness said thoughtfully. He felt on the brink of making sense of things.

“Whatever it is, it's been in the Rift,” commented Owen, holding a frantically beeping scanner to the thing. “Sensor's going haywire.”

Clarity exploded in Harkness' mind: “That's it!” Since no-one else appeared to understand, he went on impatiently: “Don't you see? They're not importing anything from off-planet, they're harvesting the Rift! That's why we can't pinpoint them, we _do_ pick them up, but we think it's just Rift stuff – because it is! They're… basically, they're doing what we're doing, only they do it for a profit. They sift through the flotsam and jetsam the Rift spits out, scavenge whatever they can, probably pick up what others leave behind too, if they can find ways of selling it...”

“One man's trash is another man's treasure,” commented Sparrow, grasping what he was saying before anyone else. “Clever.”

Gwen was thinking along different lines, however: “That means we can predict when and where they might strike next!” She grinned sharply. “Guys? I've got a plan.”

* * *

“I've got a plan,” declared the Doctor at the exact same time, but in London.

“I've got a bad feeling about this,” muttered John (but nobody got the reference, as usual).

His bad feeling had become outright worried and then full ominous by the time they reached Barts, and a certain dark-haired and usually soft-spoken pathologist.

“You want _what?!?”_ screeched Dr. Molly Hooper, aghast.

John had never seen the kind woman so appalled, and considering the alarming regularity with which Sherlock convinced her to 'support' the weirdest experiments, that was saying something.

“No. NO. Absolutely not!”

She paced her lab, wringing her hands. “I can't believe you. Go to a butcher's if you need meat! These people gifted their bodies to science, Sherlock. They wanted to be useful after their death! They wanted to help medical students learn to help other people, not- not…! They gave themselves to medicine. Medicine, Sherlock! Not some insane conspiracy theorist's absurd plan!”

“Hey!” protested the Doctor, from where he was being ignored while curiously examining something he had no business with in Molly's microscope.

“It's disrespectful!” she cried, crossing her arms half-defiantly, half-defensively.

“Molly, be reasonable. They're dead. They can't care,” retorted Sherlock condescendingly.

She gasped and glared fire from her eyes.

John coughed. “Bit not good,” he muttered.

The consulting detective frowned, but thankfully shut up.

“I suppose we could use ourselves,” mused the Doctor, who was now fiddling with a mortuary refrigeration unit, the buzz of his sonic screwdriver lost in the noise of the ventilators.

“What are you doing?” asked John, alarmed, but he was overwhelmed by Sherlock's louder: “You want to use _ourselves_ as bait?”

He sounded half-disbelieving, half-intrigued and John's alarmed focus shifted rapidly: “Sherlock. NO.”

But the Doctor was on a roll: “It could work, maybe even better, really. If we lay very still… perhaps mask our odour – oh! Oh! We could use make-up!” he exclaimed, growing enthused with the idea. “Dress ourselves up as splatstick zombies, I learned all about that on the set of _Braindead_ , you know--”

“Doctor!” tried to interrupt John, frowning fiercely.

“--I was looking for a Kahler hiding among the extras and do you know how difficult it is to find someone with a green mark on his face among people dressed up as zombies?”

“DOCTOR!” yelled John.

“...What?” the Time Lord asked, derailed.

“Correct me if I'm wrong,” said John with admirable levelness, “but isn't your idea very likely to end up with us being hunted by a bunch of enraged, sharp-toothed aliens?”

“We-eelll… I think we could call it a pack, under the circumstances, the do have a social structure after all...”

“…” John opened his mouth. He closed it. He closed his eyes, too, praying for patience. He nodded to himself. He opened his eyes and ostentatiously checked his gun.

And Molly crumbled.

“Alright! Alright! You can have the corpses! Oh God I'm going to Hell I just know it, this is all your fault, Sherlock! Don't you dare get yourself killed, I'll never forgive you! How do I always let you talk me into these things? Oh God please just don't get killed...”

“Molly!” snapped Sherlock reproachfully. “Stop being hysterical. It's utterly tedious!”

She stopped. She straightened. She glared.

And even Sherlock took a nervous step back, unsettled.

“Get. Lost,” she bit out.

* * *

“What do you mean, we lost him?” demanded Gwen, looking around herself incredulously, as if the pirate might just be hiding behind a cupboard or napping on the couch. “ _How_ did we lose him?”

“Err...”

There had been a lot to do, that was the thing. Ideas to discuss, plans and backup plans to make, details to sort out, tasks to assign, technology to find back at HQ, Tosh to meet up with, Rift monitors to check, things to organise…

And so, all in all, it had been a good hour before the Torchwood team realized that Captain Jack Sparrow wasn't with them anymore.

At which point they groaned.

“How could you lose him?” accused Gwen.

“Me? Why didn't you keep track of him?” immediately retorted Owen.

“I thought he was with you!”

“Don't you dare blame me!...”

Hakrness tuned out the bickering duo and turned to their technical expert. “Can you find him?”

“When was the last time you saw him?” asked Tosh sensibly, already searching the internet.

He closed his eyes and tried to pinpoint when, exactly, the man had slipped away. One moment he was actively encouraging their planning session, then he was quiet, but still curiously listening to them, then not paying too much attention anymore, but still smiling politely when they glanced his way… and now he wasn't there.

How had they not noticed he wasn't in the SUV with them? Only he'd been so quiet, and they'd been so busy and... Damn it all. He'd _played_ them. And they'd let him! Harkness felt like banging his head on the wall. Bloody hell, he'd known the man was a Sevenseaser, trickery was in their blood, he should have expected something like this!

“Found him!” exclaimed Tosh, the constant clicking of her keys stopping to mark her success. She turned her laptop so he could see what she'd called up: Pirate_in_Cardiff!!! already had 1827 views on Youtube and almost half as many likes.

Harkness cursed out loud.

“It's not that bad,” the pretty Asian woman smiled, scrolling the comments. “The most popular theory is that he's advertising for a new movie… followed by advertising for a fundraising tennis tournament.”

“A what?”

“He's outside the Cardiff Central Youth Club,” she explained gesturing to the CCTV video she'd called up. The grainy image on the small screen was, indeed, a pirate in a deserted parking lot. As for the location, he'd take her word for it.

“What the hell is he doing there?” asked Owen, unbelieving.

“Who cares? Let's just go get him,” said Harkness curtly.

* * *

“Do we really need to do this?” asked John, eyeing the manhole going down to the sewers with distaste.

It's not like he was squeamish, God no (he'd never have survived medical school, let alone living with Sherlock, if he was) but dear Lord the place _smelled_.

They were somewhere in Hackney, round the corner from a house that had to have been painted by someone under the influence of some very good drugs. The Doctor and Sherlock both assured him this was the best place to access creatures presumably living in the Northern Outfall Sewer. He hadn't bothered asking them how they knew that, or even how they'd determined where the carivores' lair was.

At least the Doctor had produced opaque nylon cloth to hide what they were doing and orange cones and neon yellow, hi-visibility vests (which only John had bothered putting on, of course) so that they may pass for road workers. Hopefully.

“We must gather them all up, John, I don't want to risk a repeat of the New York alligators mess,” said the Doctor, tongue between his teeth as he balanced all the components of whatever contrivance he was building around the site they'd chosen.

“I just want to be completely sure that this,” he indicated Sherlock and the the body parts that Molly had let him take and he was now artfully arranging, “is truly necessary.” He frowned, something in the sprawled limbs tickling his memory. “Sherlock, are you trying to recreate that messy cold case with the murdered builders you saw in those pictures last week?” he asked incredulously.

The consulting detective looked guilty for the briefest of instants, before choosing to ignore the blogger. Lestrade had refused to let him recreate the crime scene just for a chance to solve the case – this was too good an opportunity to pass up!

John sighed resignedly and bent to help him move the last body into position.

All the while, the Doctor kept darting hither and yon, doing six things at once and grinning wildly at the unspoken comments John was oh-so-visibly swallowing down.

“We don't even know if they're still here. They could have gone through those tunnels again, couldn't they?” the blogger protested half-heartedly.

“Balance of probability, John,” chastised Sherlock. “If they've been negatively effected on the way here, they'll stay clear of any similar openings; any return trip would only be by chance.”

“Exactly! Balance of probability says that there are several hungry, omnivorous creatures living in the sewage system of a very populous city,” proclaimed the Doctor briskly. “What happens when they come up looking for food?”

John glanced around. A group of children with sports bags were running to catch the bus, yelling merrily. At the bus stop, young men with hoodies were bent over their smartphones, and closer to their worksite, a woman in a waitress uniform was smoking and watching a few teens toss a ball back and forth and against a wall. An old lady was dragging a rickety trolley full of groceries down the sidewalk. Two mums had stopped for a chat, angling their respective prams so that they weren't in the way.

“Point taken,” he swallowed; but he was still uneasy. “Wouldn't it be better to do it at night, though?” When they frowned at him, he insisted: “I'm just not comfortable with the idea of calling up a bunch – oh, excuse me, a _pack_ – of potentially murderous aliens into a crowded street.”

“It's hardly crowded, John.”

“Not murderous! There is no criminal intent behind their actions. Besides there's nothing to worry about, it's the trip in the spatio-temporal tunnel that's made them aggressive, now that nothing's messing with their low-level telepathic field, they should be back to mild-mannered self-defence-only types...”

“Should, huh?” muttered John. Sherlock was too busy studying the well-disposed bodies with intent to pay him any mind.

The Doctor bounced around the place, checking that everything was just so, turning his devices on and setting up a blower fan. “There! Done! As soon as they enter this area, they'll get terribly drowsy and I'll be able to round them up and return them to their planet of origin. Easy peasy!” He stopped with a hand on the on button of the fan: “Ready?”

And suddenly even John was grinning. Because they were doing this regardless of his misgivings and what the hell, he might as well enjoy it! If there was one thing that the three of them unequivocally had in common, it was the wild, goofy delight that they took in carrying out some crazed, brillian plan!

“Right, yes. Let's get the hell out of here!” he said, grabbing Sherlock by an arm to pull him to safety.

The fan started buzzing, wafting the smell of the meat, and the Doctor jumped back and hurried after the two friends, already babbling about something…

A football streaked past them out of nowhere (“Sorry!” yelled the laughing teens from down the street. “Throw it here, will ya?”) but the wide-eyed Time Lord could only hold out a hand helplessly (“NO!”) while it, with unerring precision, hit the closest tottering contrived projector, making it stagger out of alignment and stutter to a stop--

“Oh, no!… Run!”

* * *

The Torchwood team kept an eye on Sparrow through the CCTV feed, watching him stride up and down the parking lot and the nearby grassy space in huge steps, holding a little box up or to the side at random.

Fortunately, by the time the black SUV skidded to a stop by the Youth Centre, the pirate was still there, now propped against a sickly tree trunk, intently studying his hand-held box – a compass, Harkness realized, dismissing it almost at once.

"How's holding up that tree going, Sparrow?" he called out jovially, masking his irritation. It was their own damn fault they'd lost him, after all.

The pirate appeared to give his mocking question some serious consideration, looking up at the leaves above his head, then around himself, then up again.

“Still standin', so I'd say 'twas a job well done,” he replied with a little smirk. He pushed himself up and disappeared the compass into some pocket or other.

“Good, good. Now you can come and hold up the bars of one of our cells,” said Harkness, still too-jovial. “And no, that's not an invitation you can turn down. God knows what you could do if we let you wander around unsupervised...”

“You wound me, Cap'n,” protested Sparrow, deftly avoiding every attempt to grasp him. “To think I would bring trouble to this here town. City!” he corrected himself quickly.

Harkness swiftly cut off his strategic retreat and pinned him with a mild glare.

“It won't be for long,” promised Tosh, holding out her hand in a soothing motion. “We're about to catch those smugglers, then we'll be able to help you. And look at the bright side! Once we close up the case, you can help us celebrate!” she said encouragingly.

She motioned to the SUV hopefully. An annoyed Owen held the door open. Gwen drew her gun with a snort.

“Oh, a party! I love a good party,” the pirate said brightly, dancing out of their reach once more.

“Me too,” said Harkness blandly, stepping to the side to cut Sparrow's way again. For some reason, his team groaned loudly at this – which was patently unfair. What had he even said?

“First, we catch the bad guys. Then we party,” said Gwen sternly and raised the gun, freezing Sparrow in mid-step as he made to slip away.

“And you are coming with us, one way or another,” added Harkness throwing an arm around the pirate's shoulders (and wrinkling his nose). He turned to march his captive to the SUV. “No more wandering!” he scolded.

“You seem ta need a lesson or five on having fun, Cap'n. Might I suggest a visit to Singapore?”

“Oh, would I ever!”

* * *

“RUN!”

The Doctor was yelling at the top of his lungs, waving his long arms about frantically at the few foolish people that weren't diving for cover inside the nearest building, while still holding up his sonic screwdriver like a beacon, to ensure the pack followed them.

Sherlock was barking out directions, taking the three of them and their pursuers towards the safety of the Tardis at high speed, along the route with less probability of people and most probability of obstacles to throw behind them in the aliens' path.

Said aliens – several rabid humanoids with sharp fangs and flattened noses – were hot on their heels.

A couple of shots from John's gun had slowed the creatures down the tiniest bit, but they seemed awfully determined to chase them. And very, very angry. If John hadn't needed all his breath to keep ahead of them, he'd have shouted _I told you so_ at the Doctor – repeatedly!

Tearing through a private backyard and then slamming a gate behind them bought them the chance to distance them a little – enough that they could reach their goal (and John wanted to yell when the Doctor got a _key_ out, didn't he have a better way to open the door, something _faster_ , damnit, phenomenal technology and he still relied on bloody keys!).

They all burst into the Tardis at last, adrenaline running high, and the Doctor flew to the controls, typing instructions to his ship at breakneck speed. “Don't close the door!” he warned.

The two Londoners almost collapsed in a heap just inside, breathless and giddy, while the Tardis shuffled her rooms disposition a bit and a wide path formed through her control room, a big door opening obligingly at the end of it.

“Drowsy, you said! Sleepy!” John complained loudly, too hyped up to just catch his breath quietly. He pointed a finger at the aliens outside repeatedly: “That isn't sleepy, Doctor!”

“Sorry! I'm so sorry! The ball disalligned the projector – the combination of wavelengths turned into a highly disruptive one, meant to boost reaction times and get the adrenaline pumping instead of being calming!”

“Next time, we're using chemical agents!” snapped Sherlock, straightening up and retying his scarf.

The growling creatures reached the Tardis.

“Right. Go! Run straight through!” shouted the Doctor pointing authoritatively to the newly formed door, and John and Sherlock obeyed because what else could they do?

In they went, through a bare room with a hint of grass smell in the air that had been on the other side of the ship just before, out an opening on the wall in front of them that closed seamlessly after them, down a brief straight corridor and through another door-- into the console room.

They stumbled to a stop in shock, right in time to watch the pack of aliens run in after them (Sherlock made a pained sound when he actually spotted the back of his own coat flapping out of sight) and straight into the grass-smelling room. Quick as lightning, the Doctor slammed the door shut after them and locked it with his sonic screwdriver.

“And done!” the Time Lord cheered.

Sherlock was pale, eyes closed, muttering something irate that had to do with 'ridiculous ships' and 'impossible geometries' and the 'underrated need for rational coherence in reality'. John pushed him gently onto the Captain's seat.

The Time Lord moved to the controls, working quickly. “All set. Safely contained and ready for delivery!All's well what ends better, isn't it? Let me just reverse the polarity of the neutron flow and we'll go retrieve the bodies...”

“Neutron--” Shrugging off the shock, Sherlock glared, appalled: “That has no scientific meaning whatsoever!”

The Doctor paused briefly. “I know, but people don't usually call me on it.”

* * *

Sparrow never made it all the way to the Torchwood SUV, because a bushy hedge bordering the opposite side of the parking lot suddenly developed a mouth.

“Oh, that's where it is!” he exclaimed happily and before Harkness could figure out how, the pirate had freed himself of his grip and was running uncoordinatedly towards the swirling, stormy nothingness swelling within and oozing out of the hedge.

“What? Wait!” They took off after him, but he had a good headstart and was shockingly fast.

“How is he doing that? The way he moves his arms – he looks like he's slacklining in mid-air, how can he possibly be that fast?” protested Owen – none of them was a slouch when it came to speed, but Sparrow was still faster, damnit!

They slammed to a stop just out of reach of the greyish stuff (long experience teaching them to stay far from unknown substances), yelling demands and threats that were ignored, and could only watch the pirate running straight up to the odd energy mouth and plunging into it with a perfect dive.

“That's him gone, then,” sighed Gwen.

Harkness ran a weary hand over his face. He was worried about what mess the man might create wherever the tunnel led him to, but… he had to prioritize. A pirate from Sevenseas could take care of himself, surely?

“Right, well. Let's put up a perimeter around this place and go catch those bastards first, we'll worry about the pirate in the hedge later.”

And with that, the Torchwood team threw a last backward glance to where Captain Sparrow had just been and turned their attention with synchronized efficiency to finally, _finally_ corral the Zocci smugglers they'd been after for so long.

* * *

Miles to the east of that parking lot, Jack Sparrow landed with a painful twist onto a London pavement what seemed ta be filled with torn up bodies and got up quickly, dizzy from the unpleasant trip, staggering drunkenly for a moment as he tried to get his bearing.

That was made difficult by the forked coral struts fazing in and out of perception all around him, with blaring trumpets heralding the reshaping of reality into that magnificent ship of the Doctor's.

“There you are!” cried three voices at once.

“Am I?” asked Sparrow, sounding doubtful.

“So you are the pirate,” stated Sherlock, studying him closely. “You've led an… interesting life. Most of it on the sea – obvious; salt-encrusted clothes, kohl eyeliner against the glare of sun and wind, odd balance… You scan your surrounding constantly, you don't appear to, but you're aware of everyone's and everything's position at all times – you're used to being in danger, even when among comrades. You likely have a reputation for untrustworthiness, then.”

Sparrow's eyebrows rose, but Sherlock barely took a breath before continuing rapidly: “The way you move indicates you rely on agility and quick wit rather than brute force, likely because of your average height and build, but the callouses on your hands say clearly that you're a skilled swordsman. The slurred speech and your blasé attitude towards confusion speak of semi-perpetual drunkenness, but you're less effected by being intoxicated than you let people believe. Keeping everybody off-balance gives you an advantage.”

He ignored the slight narrowing of the pirate's eyes and declared approvingly: “You're clever. _Very_ clever. Fiercely independent – you care nothing about other people's opinion of you and you'll do whatever you need to be able to do whatever you want. Clearly you have a unique sense of style – most likely each piece of attire you wear has a tale to it and I would venture to say you haven't paid for any of it.”

Sparrow smirked, but didn't interrupt.

“The trinkets in your hair and clothes mark your history of daring ventures, but the rings, ah, the rings. This one,” Sherlock tapped the gold and onyx flower ring on the man's left hand, “is clearly a trophy, stolen or conned I'd wager, while this one,” he held up Sparrow's right hand, on the index finger of which glinted an antique ring with a green stone set between a skull on each side, “is more likely an heirloom – the stone is obviously not of value but you are more careful with it than the others nonetheless: sentiment. And these you haven't had long.”

He turned the hand to better see the two thin gold bands the pirate wore on the same finger, both with weirdly woven knots reminescent of a plate of spaghetti.

He dropped that hand and grabbed the other, raising it and pushing the sleeves back, exposing a gold and amethyst Greco-Roman ring and a piece of lace wrapped around the wrist. “This ring is a different matter; given the pattern of wear you've rubbed into it – you worry it often, obvious – it is both significant and representative of an unresolved situation; a promise? Not a bethrotal, you don't have any significant female in your life at this time – a business arrangement that fell through then, or that has yet to bear fruit. Now, the lace? _That_ is from a romance. Former lover, and you obviously miss her – _she_ left you, or you wouldn't have kept this. Dead? Just moved on?” he wondered, but did not give the pirate a chance to answer.

“You've been to the Far East, clearly,” he went on instead, fleetingly touching the silver and jade oriental dragon ring on Sparrow's left thumb. “More than once,” he added, eyeing the Chinese luck coin tied to a bone with some copper wire that peeked out of his hat. “Enough to pick up some of the beliefs and superstitions. Oh, and you you have some familiarity with vodoo practices.”

He flicked the blackened chicken paw dangling from Sparrow's belt before pushing the other sleeve up, baring the forearm.

“The tattooes are quite obvious – P for pirate, branded by the East India Trading Company – clearly you were caught at least once, but escaped the gallows somehow; the sparrow flying across a setting sun is just as well-known: sailors used this to sygnify that the bearer has sailed all of the Seven Seas – so you're a well-travelled and experienced seaman.”

Sparrow snatched his arm back and adjusted his coat sleeve fastidiously.

“That 'X' scar on your right cheek tells me you've run afoul of someone with a grudge but to whom you were useless if dead. A scar like that is deliberate, they were giving you a message,” he elaborated and asked absently: “Did you owe them money? That you never rub it shows me you don't think much of it, either you already dealt with the messenger or you simply don't care.”

That earned him another slight smirk, but Sherlock barely acknowledged it.

“Given the times you lived in and chosen lifestyle, it is unlikely that you received any formal education, but the way you track the written word in the monitors around us betrays that you are far from illiterate. You more or less raised yourself then, and developed a taste for reading out of the same curiosity that gave you a taste for piracy,” he concluded. “Then there's your hat.”

He paused to draw breath, looking smug.

“Important things, hats,” said Sparrow blandly.

“To you, certainly. It's a key element in your look, possibly in your identity,” Sherlock rattled off quickly. “It's battered and faded, but obviously well-loved. Practical as well as decorative. Very simple, no trimmings or emblems – freedom and independence, again – but it's not cheap wool felt either, no, this is expensive – you don't think of yourself as a mere sailor – but the sea is your life nonetheless – this is good protection from the weather, you could probably wear it in a storm without ruining it. Chances are you tried on a lot of hats before finding the 'perfect' one and now that you have it, you'll guard it jealously. It's not just a hat, it's a symbol of all you have achieved, of the role you've chosen for yourself.” He finished dramatically: “That hat is _who you are_ , Jack Sparrow.”

There was a moment of breathless silence, while the world waited for the pirate's reaction to Sherlock having deduced the hell out of him.

“Captain,” he commented eventually, unfazed.

“Excuse me?”

“It's _Captain_ Jack Sparrow.” He leaned unsteadily into Sherlock's personal space, black eyes staring into verdigris ones. “And don't you forget it.”

Sherlock wrinkled his nose at the rather pungent smell of sea and rum and lack of hygiene, but he refused to react further than that. “Always something,” he muttered, displeased.

John let out a breath, quietly amazed.

Sparrow rocked fluidly back and turned to the Doctor: “Now, my dear fellow,” he said charmingly. “Where might I find some rum?”

“You've got quite enough rum, I'd say!” protested the Time Lord.

Sparrow regarded him blankly. “…Enough rum?” he asked with profound skepticism – evidently doubting his understanding of the Doctor's language.

John darted his eyes from one to the other, trying not to laugh. “How about some tea instead?” he proposed brightly.

The pirate transferred his blank stare to him.

“Tea! Yes! Excellent choice, John Watson! Good cup of tea! Super-heated infusion of free-radicals and tannins, that's just what we need!” babbled on the Doctor, overly-cheerful.

Sherlock collapsed back on the Captain's seat, looking disgusted with life. “Tea's boring,” he muttered.

But he didn't refuse the steaming cup John handed him (unlike Sparrow, who regarded the tea with _wariness_ of all things) and so the blond settled comfortably against the Tardis' coral struts.

“Out of curiosity… what possessed you to throw yourself into the maws of a hedge?” he asked urbanely.

Sparrow, who was fiddling with some of the Tardis' levers, replied briefly: “I was following directions.”

He dangled his compass by its string for a moment before turning to squint at the curio cabinet that the Tardis had refilled for him, studying its new content to see if anything might be easily removed. His face lit up when he spied a familiar looking green trinket.

“Directions from a broken compass?” asked Sherlock scornfully.

Sparrow swivelled and made an outraged sound when he spied _his_ compass in the hands of the detective, who was studying it intently, shaking it to see if he could affect the incessant spinning.

“Sherlock,” said John reproachfully.

“And that reminds me! I shall have my psychic paper back, thank you!” interjected the Doctor loudly.

“I suppose this could be a side-effect of this ship's capabilities, but as we are currently not moving, the most logical conclusion is that this compass is useless.”

Sparrow snatched it back. “My compass is unique,” he said testily.

“Unique here having the meaning of _broken?”_ inquired Sherlock sarcastically.

Sparrow sniffed: “Oh, my compass works fine. It's you what don't understand how it works!”

That was guaranteed to seize Sherlock's attention and keep it, thought John. There'd be no rest until the detective figured the broken compass out.

“More tea?” he offered to the Doctor, resignedly.

“Is that my yo-yo?” asked the Time Lord however, frowning at the pirate.

Sparrow froze, green yo-yo falling from his grasp to dangle from its string, the merry little tune dwindling sadly because he wasn't playing with the toy properly.

“No,” he lied blatantly.

The Doctor scowled, but the pirate hurried to distract him: “Well, now! I think that we've all arrived at a very special place. Spiritually, ecumenically, grammatically,” he declared grandly, clapping his hands after slipping the yo-yo discreetly out of sight.

“That last one's important,” nodded the Doctor in mock seriousness, marching up to the man with a hand outstretched.

“Indeed,” sniffed Sherlock.

John rolled his eyes.

“Now if you could give my yo-yo back...”

Sparrow smiled winningly: “I believe it's time that I return to the Caribbean – and my bonny ship.” He deftly avoided the Doctor's grasp.

“That's a good idea,” said John mildly. “After all, you owe us, Doctor.”

“What?”

Effectively distracted, the Time Lord turned to the British doctor. “What!”

“You owe us big,” insisted John, fighting a grin. “You owe us... a trip!”

The Doctor started to protest, realized what John was saying and changed his complaint to a pleased question: “I thought you didn't want to come?”

“We don't!” said Sherlock at once. “...We don't, do we?” he asked John more quietly, trying to pretend he wasn't worried about his friend's answer – because of course John wanted to go, he'd seen as much the last time, why hadn't he expected this, stupid, stupid, but he'd thought they were past this… “You said you didn't want to leave London!” he blurted out, and refused to wince at how blatantly alarmed he sounded – feelings, urgh – but it was always like this with John and maybe, just maybe, his brother was right about this caring business…

“I said _you_ would never leave London,” corrected John and oh, this hurt – Sherlock tried to hide it, but he felt slightly ill – he knew, he _knew_ John would leave one day, why hadn't he protected himself better--

“...but I've thought of something in the meanwhile,” continued John easily, as if he wasn't forcing Sherlock to scramble to raise walls he was no longer accustomed to, not from this quarter-- “We don't actually need to leave London, do we?”

Sherlock blinked as his friend's actual words registred. _Us_. _We_. As in… Sherlock-and-John travelling, not just John leaving. Travelling in this almost nightmarish irrational not-space that he could barely stand.

The consulting detective kept quiet, mind spinning, uncharachteristically insecure.

John had a huge grin: “I was thinking… we could visit a dry cleaner's shop on St John's Wood High Street, in April of 1949.”

A heartbit, then Sherlock's eyes glowed with interest. “You mean... John, you can't possibly mean...!”

The Doctor was baffled: “Why would we do that?”

“Emily Armstrong,” explained Sherlock, breathless with sudden excitement. “She had her skull shattered by 22 blows from a claw hammer. There were some suspects, but no leads ever truly panned out. It's one of the unsolved murders I've studied… If I could examine the crime scene…!” Suddenly the idea of travelling in this headache-inducing timeship wasn't too bad anymore.

The Doctor's face lit up. “Oh! Brilliant! You want to go to 1949, then? I can certainly manage that!” He started running around the Tardis console, dialling coordinates and pushing buttons and levers.

“Or else November, 1536,” offered John, shifting to grasp the Tardis' coral trunks securely.

“Robert Pakington!” Sherlock guessed at once, moving to hold onto something as well. “Even better! The first handgun murder in London ever. Merchant and Member of Parliament, later cast as martyr, but to this day still an unsolved case!”

“Not for long!” exclaimed the Doctor happily. “We'll be then in a jiffy. I haven't been in 1536 in a while, actually. This might be interesting indeed!”

The Tardis' dematerialization sounds rose and fell all around them excitingly.

“Of course, first we've got to bring him back,” the Doctor said, carelessly pointing at Jack Sparrow while he kept busying himself with the controls.

The pirate was lounging on a branch of the coral-like interior, in a position that ought to be impossible in terms of balance but managed to appear incredibly comfortable. He smile sardonically from under his lowered hat, the light of the Tardis' core catching on his golden tooth.

“You can do that later!” scowled Sherlock, pouting like a child who got told he had to wait for dessert. “I don't want to spend more time in this ridiculous ship than necessary!”

The Tardis promptly buckled, sending him to collide against a wall. He cursed, while a three-parts chorus protested his careless remark.

“Don't insult her!”

“This here is a magnificent ship!”

“My Tardis is not ridiculous!”

Sherlock got up, scowling for all he was worth.

“Oh, come on!” cajoled John after a moment. “Didn't you want to be a pirate when you were a child?”

Sherlock looked at him, startled. How did John even _know_ these things?

Sparrow jumped to his feet in a quick, deft movement, as usual managing to appear graceful through a combination of clumsy motions. And moved towards Sherlock, invading his personal space with a cocky grin: “You wanna be a pirate, lad? I c'n make you a pirate!”

Sherlock gazed slowly from Sparrow's confident, sexy smirk, to the Doctor's eager, self-assured grin, to John's warm, excited smile.

Sniffing haughtily, he raised his chin, wrapped his scarf more securely around his neck: “Alright, then,” he said, and popped Sparrow's hat off his head, deftly moving it to his own, ignoring the yelped, indignant: “Me hat!”

He smirked: “The game is on!”


End file.
